


Severus Snape and the Ghostwritten Romance

by Cluegirl



Category: Cyrano de Bergerac - Rostand, Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M, Pastiche
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-06
Updated: 2010-05-06
Packaged: 2017-10-09 08:24:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 65,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/85036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cluegirl/pseuds/Cluegirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Voldemort is gone, but his Death Eaters remain a threat.  Until the day their youngest member, Draco Malfoy, returns to England to try and save Harry Potter's life, if he can find him, and get through Harry's formidable, self appointed guardian; Severus Snape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Act One

"I'm sorry, Dra -" Neville flinched, remembering at the last moment, "Luther. Mr. Arkwright. I'm sorry, but I can't help you. I really don't know how to find him."

Draco grabbed his hand, scanning the tea shop from behind smoked glasses. "Come on, Longbottom," he hissed once he was sure none of the other customers were watching, "I'm not playing! You have no idea what I've risked to come here and warn him."

"No, I do," the herbalist protested, "I do understand-"

"No, you don't!" Draco took a shaky breath, ran both his hands through his hair and forced himself to calm down. "I'm not talking about Azkaban, Longbottom, I'm talking about what my lot will do if they catch up with me here! _cruciatus_'s come a long way since your folks, you know! Real innovators in the field of pain, my old crowd -- even more so now they've lost the Dark Lord to Potter twice!"

Neville went still, his earnest shopkeeper façade slipping to reveal the duelist he kept hidden from the world. Draco remembered losing badly to Longbottom more than once in his seventh year. "Look," he tried again, "I know you've no reason to trust me, but you have to try. I need you to try, because I don't know what else to do! I'll submit to whatever precautions you want -- question me with veritaserum, take my wand, put me under _imperio_ \-- whatever insurance your Order of the Phoenix needs, I'll give them. But you _must_ take me to him, Neville -- I need you to take me to Potter before it's too late!"

"Dra - oh bother. Luther," the hazel eyes slipped back to the beguiling softness that had always been the shy boy's best weapon, "I didn't say I _wouldn't_ help you, I said I _couldn't_. I don't know how to reach Harry, nobody does. They say he's under-"

"Some new kind of _fidelis_ charm," Draco finished, picking currants from the ruins of his scone, "_They_ know that, and they have a few ideas who the Keeper is as well. Which is why I must get to Potter first." He took a sip of the tea, trying to find comfort in the purely English ritual of cream and sugar cubes and fragrant, amber brew, "What about the Order? I don't think Potter'd be stupid enough to make an Order member his Secret Keeper, but they must know how to find him, or at least get messages to him at need."

Longbottom blinked, considering. "Well, I suppose that does stand to reason, doesn't it? With rumours of You-Know-Who trying to get himself reborn yet again-"

"They're true," Draco said, cold and tired, "He is. And believe me, he's worse than before."

"Oh. Er. Oh dear. Well, then Harry's sure to be keeping touch with the Order. You'll want to talk to one of the Weasleys, or perhaps-"

"No, Neville," Draco grabbed for his companion's arm as he started to rise, "Weasley would sooner curse me on sight than hear a word I have to say. Merlin's Beard, Potter caught my father trying to kill that girl in our second term! You tell any one of them I'm back in Britain, and the whole ginger lot of them will grind me flat without a second thought!"

"I suppose...but here, what about Hermione? Harry always listened to-"

"Granger's under _fidelis_ too. Father's been looking for her longer than Potter." Draco slouched in his chair, hating his cheap, ill-fitting clothes, hating the brown dye that made his hair heavy and itchy, hating the road-dust, sweat, and floo-soot that grimed his skin. But most of all, hating the fact that a large part of him was calculating whether it might not still be possible to go back to Spain, make his apologies to his father and the parasitic Dark Lord inside him, and just let history come crashing down over them all.

"Look," he shook himself and locked eyes with Neville over his dark glasses, "I've enough money to last a week, and I think I can make it stretch for two if I have to, so you get the message to him, all right? Just go off to your secret Order headquarters, make your special handshake, or whatever it is you do, and get someone to pass the message that ... what is it?"

"I'm not _in_ the Order, Draco."

He blinked, sure he felt the earth cracking underneath his feet. "You're not? But your parents-"

"Yes, they were in the first Order, but not me. My Grandmother wouldn't allow it." Neville put a hand over Draco's where it rested nerveless on the table between the scone-crumbs and the clotted cream, "I'm sorry..."

After several moments, Draco managed to look at him again. "I'm sorry too."

Silence gripped them, so heavy and thick that it spread to the nearby tables like a contagion. Draco knew he should leave. He knew people were beginning to look at him, and that sooner or later, someone would remember his face, dyed hair or no. But he just couldn't make himself move. Out of all the speculation and rumor about the Boy Hero's whereabouts -- hiding in the muggle world, high-security spell-testing for the Ministry, studying chiromancy with the centaurs of the Forbidden Forest, raising giant saddlebred kneasles on the Isle of Skye -- out of all the things Draco hadn't believed, to have been wrong about this. He'd gambled it all on Longbottom! It hadn't occurred to him that he could be wrong about such a critical detail.

Draco barely noticed the shop girl coming to ask if they needed anything else, and completely missed it when Longbottom sneakily paid the bill. _All for nothing,_ he thought, watching the Hogsmeade locals gathering around a makeshift stage across the square, just as if their world weren't about to come apart around them, just as if their petty local election could possibly matter when the _Ninos della Serpiente_ were rearing to strike. _I threw it all away -- everything I had is gone, and now I still can't stop any of it..._

"-long as you need to, and I don't...I say, Dra-Luther?" Draco jumped as Neville shook his shoulder, "You all right there?"

Draco laughed. "Sure, Longbottom. Never better, thanks." He finished his tea as the sandy haired man looked down with a flush. "Look; not your fault, it's just..." his gesture took in the state of his clothes and he grimaced, "Bit knackered, you know?"

"Well, that's what I was telling you; I've already arranged for your rooms here for a fortnight. On Longbottom Leaf's account." He raised a hand as Draco started to protest, "No. I do this for all of my important vendors, Mr. Arkwright, and it would seem very odd for me not to take the same care of you. If the quality of your _Diablo Garra_ weed is as you say, then we shall be doing quite a bit of business soon."

Draco closed his eyes, pinned between pathetic gratitude for the charity, and helpless indignation at having no choice but to take it. "Of course. Th-" he swallowed, "Thank you. You're... I don't know what to-"

Neville grinned and thrust out his hand to shake, "Oh, you needn't thank me. It's the least I could... what are you staring at?" He turned to follow Draco's horrified gaze out the window, to where the crowds were gathered on the Green. "Debate scheduled for today," he tried to sound comforting, still mystified by the blond's reaction, "Village council elections in a month, don't you..." he squinted as a dumpy pink figure mounted the steps. Then the figure turned to wave, revealing a toadish face under a mop of white ringlets and a single black bow. "I say! Isn't that-"

"Umbridge," Draco whispered with a shudder, "running for Mayor of Hogsmeade, by the look of things." He shuddered, momentarily distracted from his own predicament. "How loathsome. Please tell me she's running against someone halfway competent."

Longbottom grinned. "Well, no more than usual, I'm sad to say; one's a bastard cousin of the Diggorys, another is some witch from up the Faeroes nobody's ever heard of, and the third's actually an actor from Glasgow." Draco grimaced, but Longbottom only refilled both teacups from the ever-full, ever steaming teapot. "Oh, don't worry about us, Mr Arkwright; Dolores Umbridge doesn't stand a chance at public office here in Hogsmeade."

Draco regarded the crowded square, almost glad that the café's sound-dampening spells rendered the scene mute -- he'd heard more than his fair share of political codswhallop in his young life. But the crowd didn't seem to share his disinterest. "I don't know about that, Longbottom," he mused, watching as people hurried out of shops and down side streets to join the audience, "this seems like an awful lot of attention for a piddling little debate on local politics. She might be more popular than you think."

"Oh, they're not here to see her," Longbottom smiled, "It's only a matter of time before…Ah! There he is. Let's go out front and listen."

Mystified, Draco followed, hoping the thin clouds overhead would legitimize his putting up his hood.

"…fellow citizens, I am delighted at last to be allowed to stand before you today!" Umbridge was beaming across the crowd, "What an honour it is to stand here before you and share my vision for the future of this-"

"Vision, you myopic toad?" a voice like fire-blackened steel sliced through hers, startling a squeak from the woman and a gasp from Draco. _Snape?!_ "One need only look at you to realize you haven't the vision to choose your own clothing, let alone determine this town's future!"

Like smoke around a cutting black wind, the crowd split, forming a wide, straight avenue between the Potions Master and his quivering, red-faced prey, "Your own history within the Wizengamot is one of sycophancy and deliberate obduracy, utterly devoid of definable principles, recognizable ethics, and even one single original idea," Snape sneered, robes billowing as he strode toward the stage, "I find it difficult to believe that the governance of this village should fall to the likes of you. Not, at least, while there remain streets to be swept!"

"Hem!" She squeaked, backing away as he climbed to the stage with a pointed glower, "I, that is -- Original ideas! I'd plenty of original ideas when I was Minister Fudge's-"

"Toad!" Snape's bellow shut her up with gulp. "Devising creative ways to subvert the truth and deny facts vital for public safety -- these are hardly original ideas! Tyrants have been doing that for centuries. At best I will allow that you were almost clever in sending dementors to attack a schoolboy in a Muggle neighborhood, and then using his self-defense to try and discredit him!"

Draco blinked. "He's talking about Potter!" He murmured, "I was there, in the office when she said all that-"

"I know," Longbottom hissed back, equally startled, "I was there too but I didn't think Snape knew about it!"

From the look on Umbridge's pasty face, she hadn't known either. "So tell us, Miss Umbridge," Snape continued silkily, his voice filling the square without recourse to magic, "since you came here to share your _visions_ with us, just what reward did you _envision_ Minister Fudge awarding you for your complicity in his smear campaign against Harry Potter?"

The magic name. It caught through the crowd like tinder and at once the street was no longer full of spectators, but of patriots. Draco felt a chill go down his neck as the muttering arose around him. Longbottom nodded understandingly and offered him a cigarette. "I know -- he does this every time she shows up to speak. Never the same attack twice. It's amazing, isn't it?"

"I don't remember you being such a fan, Longbottom," Draco muttered, winning a laugh in reply.

"Well, not when he's yelling at me, no," Neville took out a cigarette for himself and then lit both, "but I have to admit, he is something to watch. From a safe distance."

Umbridge fingered her wand. "Hem. Hem. Mr… er, Professor Snape," she said, boosting up her sonorous charm to make her little-girl voice carry over the crowd, "As I'm certain you know, none of the accusations against myself or the Minister were ever proven -"

Again, Snape cut her off. "Were you somehow under the misapprehension that this was a Court of Law, Miss Umbridge?" He laughed, harsh as a crow's shout, "Hardly an encouraging oversight in one who seeks public office, is it? Allow me to correct you: this," he stamped a foot and the boards echoed like a drum, "is a public stage, on a public street, where any citizen may speak the truth without Ministerial approval or censorship!"

And oh, the crowd liked that one! Snape glowered, waiting out the applause before continuing his attack. "Here, Madame Inquisitor, you will find that the burden of proof does not lie with the accuser, but with the accused." Again the applause, but this time he shouted it down, "And if you do not care to address these legitimate allegations, you fraud, you turnip, you duplicitous toad, I strongly recommend that you provide the voting populace of Hogsmeade with proof that you possess at least _one_ of the prerequisites for candidacy in their government; In short, prove yourself a witch by vanishing from our sight!"

"Now see here, I-"

"On count of three, Madame Inquisitor -- your proof, or your absence! One!"

"ONE!" The crowd echoed his count.

"This is a public street!" Umbridge kicked her _sonorous_ up another level, "I -- I've as much right to be here as you-"

"Two!"

"TWO!"

Draco flinched as someone pressed a rather slimy head of cabbage into his hand. He tried to pass it on to Longbottom, but he already had two shriveled, sprouting potatoes. "This is new," the herbalist shrugged, "she's never hung around this long before."

"That's because this time she's got backup," Draco hissed, nodding at a still knot in the crowd, just off the left side of the stage, "I know that man -- the one in the blue cloak. He's a Death Eater, one we lost track of after Potter killed. Er. You know. So's the one beside him; look how they're watching Snape." Longbottom dumped the tubers and drew his wand, but Draco grabbed for his arm. "Don't! He knows they're there, just let him-"

"THREE!" The crowd roared and all at once, the air was full of flying produce. Snape shielded himself with an annoyed flourish. Umbridge wasn't so quick and took much of the barrage square on before she finally managed to shriek "Apparate!"

The crowd roared in delight, and so most of them missed the blazing slash of curselight that smashed into Snape's shield spell and sent the dark man staggering. But the second spell, the acid green, sparkling grin of the Dark Mark erupting into the air above the Potions Master's head -- well, nobody missed that. Snape had his shield back up at once, battlefield ready as the crowd began to howl.

"No!" Longbottom swore and jerked loose from Draco's grip, "No, he didn't do it!" Draco grabbed for him again, but caught only the stuttering crack of close-to disapparation.

"Damn it!" Draco hissed, craning his neck to see where the Gryffindor had gone. He thought he could hear Longbottom shouting, but in the sheeplike press of people, he couldn't make out anything near the stage. Draco couldn't even see Snape, due to a massive witch in an equally massive hat putting herself persistently into his line of sight. He bit his lip, torn between self-interest and concern for his old professor as the shouting began to subside up front.

_Bloody hell!_ He snarled to himself, shaking his wand down out of his sleeve, _Aurors'll be coming any moment to break this up and I can't be found here. Damn Longbottom anyway! What a bloody stupid time for him to finally start acting like a Gryffindor!_ He turned and began edging his way through the crowd, working against the flow and ignoring the muttered speculations around him.

Draco didn't begin to breathe properly again until he'd regained the café's terrace, where he paused to peer back at the stage. The man in the blue cloak was being goaded up onto the platform where Snape was waiting for him with a smirk visible even at this distance. Longbottom and the man's companion faced each other across the foot of the stage, both with wands drawn and held across their chests in the classic pose of dueling seconds.

Draco allowed himself a grin. This would be worth watching -- from upstairs in his room, if he could manage it.

"_Excuse, Signore_," said a voice behind him. "May I trouble you? We are trying to find someone..."

Draco stiffened, the accent prodding his already-overactive paranoia into full flame. It was Italian rather than Spanish, but that was still threat enough to an expatriate Death Eater on British soil. Marshalling his face into a scowl, he started to turn just as another voice answered the first.

"Well, I don't see how I can-"

"Please, _Signore_," a woman put in, "he is a cousin of our family and there is inheritance involved. We must find him or else the palazzo --" she sniffed, gulped a little, "it will be lost!"

So they were bounty hunters. Draco shivered and drew his cloak tighter about himself, not daring to turn and glance behind. The Italian guilds specialized in Dark Creatures and Dark Wizards, but thanks to British bureaucracy they couldn't hunt openly in England. He'd expected his father to try something vicious to get him back, but not to turn to such extreme measures -- at least he hadn't expected it so soon!

"Why, of course, of course," the local man responded at once, as any Englishman will when a pretty foreigner weeps. "Let's have a look, shall we?" The crinkle of parchment followed, and then the searing hiss of a pipe-smoker's thoughtful draw. "Why yes, I have seen him about. Just a little earlier today, in fact, down the herbalist's shoppe -- Longbottom's Leaf, I think it's called." Draco closed his eyes, took a deep breath and began trying to imagine a safe place within disapparation range.

"And do you know where we could find him now, Signore?" The woman simpered as across the square, magic sizzled and the crowd roared its approval.

"Why down the school, I shouldn't wonder," came the reply, "May not be there just now, but he'll turn up there by day's end, on account of him living there." Draco let out a surprised breath. Coins clattered on the table and a chair scraped the stones. "I've an errand there myself today, why don't I show you the way?"

"_Grazi, Signore_," said the woman in a voice full of empty promise, "my brother and I are most grateful for your assistance."

The shop girl appeared in the doorway, smiling as she recognized Draco from his earlier tea with Neville. "Ah, Mr. Arkwright, I'm glad you've come back. You forgot to pick up your room key," she called to him.

Cursing under his smile, Draco hurried over. The hunters had gone by the time he finished with the girl. On the table a sheet of parchment fluttered, stuck between the marmalade pot and the sugar bowl. He plucked it up and unrolled it, curious as to who it could be (besides himself) with a bounty on his head big enough to tempt foreign hunters onto British soil.

The face on the parchment was entirely too familiar, and under that level, temperate stare, Draco felt his heart squeeze. "Oh," he whispered, hardly blinking as a spell exploded with a scream like a banshee up on the stage, "Oh no! Oh bloody HELL no!" Then he turned on his heel and strode out of the café.

~*~

 

"It wasn't him!" Neville shouted, pointing his wand at the two cloaked men, "I saw who cast that spell!"

The taller, a man with sharp blue eyes and a scar down one side of his face, loomed close. "Mind your own business, you little-"

Neville warned him back with a shower of crimson sparks, breathing fast as his old dueling instincts took over and his magic spiraled up, ready and heady and fierce. "This is my business!" He shouted, as much to hide his stammer as to be sure the touchy crowd would hear his words, "I live in this town, and so does Professor Snape, and if strangers come around c-casting the dark mark at people, then I want to know why!"

The crowd backed him up, just like Neville had hoped they would, shouting a chorus of 'aye's and 'hear hear's that caught and carried much farther than his words had done.

"Mr. Longbottom," Neville flinched as Snape's voice cut down his spine. "Exactly what do you imagine you're doing?"

"Ww. I'm-" Neville glanced up, licking his dry lips, "He was- er- Sorry Professor?"

"I believe, as you suggested Mr." Snape squinted at the man Neville was holding at wand-point, "Rookwood, isn't it? I believe Mr. Rookwood has something to explain to us all. He can hardly be heard down there. Now get out of the man's way and let him express his idiocy where the people in back can properly see!"

"Crowscroft is my name," the man countered hotly, shoving at the hands that were herding him up onto the stage, "If it's any business of a murdering Death Eater like yourself! Let me go, you bloody great cow!" The man shook off the propelling hands and straightened his robes angrily. His partner edged backward, clearly intending to escape in the confusion, but Neville blocked him with a wand jabbed into his chest. The man twitched, Neville jabbed harder. Then they understood each other.

"Crowscroft indeed?" Snape was saying up on the stage, circling the other man like a shark, "The last time you were on your knees before the Dark Lord, you were calling yourself Rookwood."

"Why you! I never! That's pre-"

"I wonder, did your parents even _give_ you a proper name when you were born, or just a collection of disposable soubriquets? And which will you move on to when that toad Umbridge can no longer pay you to attack her detractors? Ravenroost perhaps, or Blackbirdborough?" Snape tutted, "You'll want to start choosing better masters before you run out of aliases."

"You're the only Death Eater here!" Rookwood shouted, "You should be in Azkaban with the rest of your murdering kind!"

"Cleverly said for one so adept at casting the _Morsmordre_ himself, wouldn't you say?" Snape's voice rang out over the crowd, goading, mocking. "My work against the Dark Lord is well known, both to the Ministry, and to the populace now the war is over. Have you such a reasonable excuse for _your_ familiarity?" Snape leaned in close and poked at Rookwood's sleeve with his wand. "Care to compare scars then?

"How dare you-"

"Come now, Rookwood, if you will not confess it, I'm sure your wand can tell us how well it remembers its way around an Unforgivable curse."

"Bastard!" The crowd gasped as Rookwood flung a hex at the Potions Master.

Snape deflected almost casually and before the sparks had even settled, his own wand was sketching the traditional salute and invocation. "I accept your challenge, Rookwood, and Longbottom there shall stand as my second."

Startled, Neville turned, but before he could protest, his captive flinched and tried to run. "No you don't," he grabbed a trailing sleeve and hauled him to the stage, "If I have to stand second, then you do too!" he jabbed the man into place with what he hoped was an intimidating glower.

"What? I didn't! That is, I never ins-" Rookwood was backing up as Neville and his captive blocked the stairs, "Why should I give you the satisfaction?"

"Because if you do not meet me in the circle, then everyone will know you for a braggart and a coward," Snape replied with an offhand shrug as he tossed his over-robe across the podium, "In itself nothing much, except that everyone now connects you with Umbridge, and such public humiliation as this crowd will deal to you should you attempt to leave the stage without dueling -- well that is a contagious thing. Her political career would never recover, I shouldn't think. And she would, of course, rightly blame you."

Rookwood paled. "You utter bastard!"

But Snape was unimpressed. "The spell please, seconds, before we die of old age?"

"You've no idea what you're meddling with, you fool," Neville's captive growled, pulling out his wand and raising its point to meet Neville's own, "Dolores Umbridge is a powerful woman, and she has a long arm-"

"Mr. Longbottom knows quite well that mine is longer by eleven inches of willow." Snape interrupted with a sneer, displaying his wand to the crowd. A twist of silver and crystal rambled like glittering fire from wrist to elbow over his black sleeve. "And let this stand as a warning: any man who means to level judgment at this arm which bore my wand in battle against the Dark Lord had best know his business!" he sketched a sharp blaze of sparks through the air, smirking as Rookwood flinched backward.

"Walk away, herbalist," the other second hissed under the crowd's raucous laughter, "while you still can!"

"Shut up and cast the spell," Neville replied, flicking his wand against the other's. "_Isolatum Morituri!_" A lick of icy flame leapt from Neville's wand as the other second repeated the incantation. With a last glare, they both pointed the flame at the dirt and turned their backs on each other to inscribe the dueling barrier into the village green. The grass scorched as they passed.

The crowd backed respectfully as the glassy curtain of power rose up and domed over, raptly horrified and delighted at once. By ancient law, anything at all could go on inside the circle -- even Unforgivables were fair game under the mantle of the Wizard's Duel. Things almost never went that far, since the shield would only hold until one of the two yielded, lost consciousness, or died, but with two former Death Eaters in the ring no onlooker doubted that the end of the day would see blood on the stone.

~*~

"Well Severus," Minerva MacGonagall said as she bustled into the private parlous in the back of the Three Broomsticks, "you're in luck -- he'll live." The Potions Master looked up from his tumbler of firewhiskey, one eyebrow arched. "Oh, not Rookwood, of course," she corrected, "He was dead before the circle fell. No, I mean the other one -- name's Lodoss, if the aurors are to be believed. He'll survive once they take the rest of his leg off, and then it'll be Azkaban for him." She pulled a chair close and sat to examine her colleague with eyes grey and sharp. "Right then: where did he tag you?"

Snape scowled, but Minerva returned the forbidding look, and he thought better of dissembling. "Nausea hex. It will pass before midnight, I think. Rookwood was trying for a stomach rupture, but flubbed his pronunciation." Severus snorted and set aside the un-touched liquor. "The idiot never could manage Aramaic. I don't know why he even tried that curse."

Minerva shook her head and took up the abandoned drink. "Well I think I can speak for all of us at Hogwarts when I say that I am profoundly glad that _your_ Aramaic was dead on." She toasted him solemnly and let a sip burn over her tongue. "Though at the last, the poor fool didn't really stand a chance, Aramaic or not. Not once he cast _that_ spell at you."

Severus nodded, leaning back into his chair with a sigh. "Yes. You'd think the idiot hadn't been right there when Potter used that exact same defense to kill Voldemort. Had I stood in Rookwood's shoes, I should have died of embarrassment before my own curse even struck me." He snorted, and then hiccupped uncomfortably. "How is Longbottom?"

"Oh fine, fine," Minerva replied, "One burn across his cheek, and a bit of ringing in his left ear, but otherwise he's just a bit dazed. And since Rosemerta won't let the adoring masses back here with you--"

"May her offspring be blessed."

"Hush, you. Your would-be fans are currently recounting the gorier details of the duel to each other and lionizing young Neville up in the tap room."

Snape actually laughed at that. "That's the way with Gryffindors, isn't it? By end of night, no doubt, he'll be the hero triumphant, and I the plucky assistant who took a convenient pratfall to draw the villain's fire." Minerva scowled at his flippant bitterness, but didn't bother to correct. She knew better than to give credence to the man's over-played prejudice -- he didn't mean the half of it, but if challenged, would defend his words like the cobra its nest; spitting venom at all present. Sheer stubborn vanity, and no two ways about it.

So she changed the subject. "It seems to me, Severus, that you go quite a bit out of your way to carry out this vendetta of yours. I mean I have as much reason to loathe Dolores Umbridge as anyone, but you don't see me haranguing her in-"

"Perhaps, if we did see you, or in fact, _anyone_ speaking out against that sadistic, repulsive sack of spite," Severus hissed through his teeth, "I would not have had to kill a man today!"

Minerva just stared at him, waiting.

Soon enough, his volcanic temper evaporated, and he blew out his breath in a long, pained hiss. "No, of course you are right. If not today, Rookwood would have become a threat soon enough. But that woman -- that WOMAN!" The glasses jumped and chimed as he pounded the table. "I cannot look at her, cannot hear her voice without my blood boiling in my veins. That she should imagine she can trundle about and simper and smile and, by Merlin's withered bollocks, _flirt_ with these townspeople! As if they could somehow fail to note the vile creature she truly is! To see her step her foot upon this village's streets makes me sooner wish them cracked apart and swallowed by the earth!"

Snape burst to his feet, pacing across the room, which seemed far too small to contain his ire. Minerva listened in wide-eyed silence. "It is enough that she lives to draw breath, and too much that she does so outside of Azkaban, but to see that bloodthirsty bitch whoring so shamelessly for votes…" he pounded one fist on the heavy oaken windowsill, then made himself stop, swallowing hard several times as the lingering hex reasserted itself.

"She used a blood quill, did you know?" Snape asked after a moment, his voice almost recovered. "When she was tormenting… the students that year. She used a damned blood quill!"

Minerva nodded grimly. "Yes. I'd heard rumors to that effect, but even so, Severus --"

"I saw Potter's hand in bloody bandages no less than twice a week throughout that term, and I know you saw it as well. Did you ever get a glance at what she made him write there? Did he ever show you the wound or the scar?"

"No, Severus," she answered, "I didn'a see it."

His hard, angry gaze crumpled, showed a bare flicker of something behind, and then he looked at the floor. "Nor did I. But by Merlin, I wish I did know, so I might carve it across that fat toad's cheek!"

Minerva sipped her drink, schooling her expression and her thoughts. She waited until he deflated enough to drop into the soft chair beside him, then delicately cleared her throat. "Have you told Potter how you feel about him, Severus?"

He closed his eyes, sucked a deep breath. But he did not deny it. "Look at me, Minerva. No, spare your flattery, I know what face greets me in my shaving mirror, and it is nothing shy of grotesque." He slouched behind his steepled fingers as though the white hands could shelter his despair. "Even had I not spent seven years as the secondary torment of Potter's life, even had I not insulted him, his family, his friends, and everything he cared about, even were his tastes to run to men, which I've no reason to suppose they do, how on _earth_ could such a declaration from me be anything less than disgusting to him?"

Minerva managed not to smirk. "You'll never know if you don't at least ask, Severus. You've plenty to recommend you, after all; you're a hero several times over, and Potter knows it better than most. He's not a shallow boy anymore. Do give him the chance."

He laughed. "Do you think you're tempting me with this, Minerva? You know me better than that. I fought to maintain my dignity at all costs, through the worst humiliations that Voldemort, Sirius Black, Lucius Malfoy, and Albus Dumbledore could level at me. What makes you think I'll juggle with it now? And with _him_, of all people?"

She smiled, poured herself another two fingers, then transfigured the tumbler into a cup, and the liquor into steaming peppermint tea. "You were not in love with any of them," she said, smiling as she set the teacup on his knee. "He was there today, did you know?" His startled glance answered that question. "Just at the end of Violet's lane where the tinker's used to be. He was on the roof with his firebolt in one hand, and his wand in the other, looking positively white with worry."

"He -- he broke his cover?" Snape growled, snatching the cup off his knee and sitting bolt upright in the chair, "That careless, reckless, stupid young FOOL! How could he parade himself in a crowd like that?"

"Perhaps," Minerva hummed, pouring herself a dram of proper single malt from the sideboard, "he was too worried about you to stay away." He made a rude noise, and she returned it with interest. "Young Potter has always made a point of liking whomever he chooses, without reference to, or concern for what anyone else might think. Now something drew him out to that street today, Severus, and the only thing he stayed to watch was you." Merlin, but the hope in those black eyes was a terrified thing! "He did not budge from that roof until the circle came down and he saw that you were the one still standing. Surely that must give you a bit of confidence?"

"Bah. He was just watching out for his classmate--"

"Severus!"

"Minerva!" He mimicked her tone, "Stop meddling! You aren't a patch on Albus in that capacity and I didn't appreciate it when he was alive. I have bourn up under the scorn of the world, but the one thing I will not -- cannot face is that Harry Potter should laugh at me. So please allow my pathetic obsession a dignified death, won't you?"

She huffed. "Aye, death by starvation, no doubt! Well there's no fool like an old fool, I suppose--"

A sudden clatter at the window interrupted, and both jumped at the sound. Wings battered at the mullioned glass for a moment, claws scrabbled. Snape flipped open the catch, then ducked aside as five foot of snowy owl shouldered its way in from the night.

"Hedwig!" Minerva yelped, throwing out her arm as the bird swooped about the room. But she banked sharp, back-winged twice, and dropped neatly onto Snape's black-clad shoulder. Gobsmacked, he could only flinch away as she mussed his hair while folding her wings. She stuck out her leg with an imperious hoot and Minerva hid a smile as Severus fumbled to untie the note. He read, and she watched him read, fascinated at the range of colours he went through -- nerve-green, terror-white, and a fleeting blush that could have been flattered pleasure or even hope. Being patient was hell, but she managed.

"He wants to see me," Snape breathed at last, settling weakly back into his chair, "Tomorrow. He wants. To see…."

"Oh, for pity's sake!" Minerva snatched the note from his slack fingers, losing only a corner to his panicked clench. "Just let me see it, will you?"

_Dear Professor Snape,  
I know this note probably comes as a surprise to you, but I was hoping you might be able to meet me at the Three Broomsticks on Sunday morning. We haven't ever been what you could call 'friendly', but to be honest I rather hope we've reached peace enough between us that we can talk for awhile. You see, there's been something on my mind lately; something I think only you would understand, and I really need to talk about it. I'm being awfully presumptuous, I know, but at least it's staying true to type for me, right Sir? Anyway, I'm hoping you can dredge up the patience to meet me. I'll even buy you breakfast so you'll get some compensation for your time._

If you will meet me, please write what time you'll be there on the back of this note and give it back to Hedwig. If you're not interested (which I hope you are interested, but I'll understand if not I suppose) just throw the note away, send Hedwig home and I won't trouble you further.  
Sincerely yours,  
Harry Potter.

She read in silence and thought she'd been fighting off the urge to smirk quite well until Snape growled and stalked over to snatch the paper back. "Say one word about having told me so, you old cat, and I will hex you with fleas!" He slapped the paper down, and scrawled across the back. "The brat probably just needs to consult on… a potion." He rolled the note and retied it. Even the owl didn't seem to believe him. "Or some defense spell…Oh, do stop leering at me, woman!"

"Would you rather I laughed outright?" She asked as he shoved the bird back out into the night.

His lips thinned, but whatever blistering retort he had planned was cut off when Madame Rosemerta threw open the door and bustled a scorched and limping Remus Lupin into the room.

"Good heavens!" Minerva cried, rushing to help the man into a seat, "Whatever's happened, Lupin?"

His eyes flashed, golden and desperate for a moment, and he weakly shoved at her hands. "Mno, pleashe..."

"Minerva."

"A moment, Severus. Whatever happened to him, Rosemerta?"

"Minerva, step back -- both of you, stop it!"

"I've no idea, Minnie, he just stumbled in and --"

"GET BACK NOW!" Severus bellowed, blasting the chair and its occupant backward into the corner. Both witches shrieked, half startled, half outraged. Lupin whimpered as the chair hit the wall, but his pained grimace explained all, for crowded into his human jaw was a ragged mass of wolfish teeth.

"Pleashe don' toush me," he managed to growl before he fainted.

~*~

The old Chinese man at the noodle shop shook his head and pushed the scrap of parchment away. "He not here."

"I know he's not here!" Draco ground through his teeth as he tried for the fifth time to slide the warning note across the battered counter, "I can bloody well SEE that he's not here! All I bloody well WANT is for YOU to take this stinking NOTE, and GIVE IT TO HIM IF HE COMES HERE!"

Shouting put a dent in that smile at least, but before he could imagine he was getting somewhere with the old man, (who probably was not _actually_ considered a simpleton amongst his own people,) Draco found himself facing a wand over the bubbling trays. "He. Not. Here," explained the old man as if Draco were the dangerous idiot, "You go now!"

_Sweet Merlin, how does Potter do it?_ Draco wondered, running a hand through his hair in frustration. He wanted a cigarette desperately, but had smoked his last one hours ago. He tapped the note again, pretending to ignore the old man's threat while he shook his own wand down into his palm. "Look, Mr..." he leaned back to read the signboard, "Fook, or whatever your name really is, try and get this much through your head; Professor... Lupin... Will... Be... MURDERED TONIGHT!" He pounded the counter, overturning the cup of chopsticks. "Now nobody wants that, do they? No they don't! Now you can stop that happening if you'll just GIVE HIM THIS BLOODY NOTE!"

"I say," called an amused voice from behind his shoulder, "that isn't Draco Malfoy is it?" He managed not to whip around, but couldn't quite still the flinch in his stomach to hear his real name tossed out at such volume. The man behind him laughed, clapping a hand on Draco's shoulder and turning him to the light. Draco swallowed a groan and gave up all hope of maintaining his anonymity. "By Morgana's tits, it is," Blaise Zabini crowed and dragged him into a hug, "I _knew_ I recognized that particular tone of petulant bitchiness! When did you get back to England?"

"Well strictly speaking, Zabini, I'm not-"

"And why the devil didn't you come straight to me? Didn't I tell you last time we met up -- Prague, wasn't it? -- that I had our next round? How am I meant to settle it if you don't even knock me up when you're about?"

Draco concentrated on taking deep breaths and not shouting while his classmate pumped his hand. "Well I didn't know you were about, Z," he replied at a pointedly subdued volume, "I'm not exactly on the top of the reunion committee's owling list, am I? What _are_ you doing here, anyway?"

"What, besides keeping Lee from cursing you with One Thousand Days of the Fiery Shits?" Zabini flashed a grin which would have done Lockheart proud and shrugged "I'm teaching Charms down the school, of course. What, hadn't you heard?" Draco shook his head, and Zabini pulled out one of the stools to sit. "Well, old Flitwick's gone and retired to the Colonies with a red-headed swimsuit model. Turned the whole business over to me. Thanks Lee," he added as the old man -- smiling once more -- slid a steaming bowl across the counter, "Now it's your turn, Dragon of Ill Intent; What are you doing back in England, what are you doing back in Hogsmeade, why are you antagonizing poor Lee Ho, and what in Merlin's name have you done to your hair?"

Vanity stung, Draco couldn't help touching one limp strand beside his ear. "Just a little dye is all."

"Ugh!" Zabini snapped his chopsticks apart with a grimace. "And what do you call that colour anyway; Muddy Gutter?"

"I _call it_ not getting arrested on sight by the first auror I pass in the street," Draco hissed, trying not to watch Zabini eat. His own stomach, twistingly empty, gurgled as he nudged the scrap of parchment with one finger. "And as for your happy little friend here, he seems to have a problem with my wanting to leave this message for Professor Lupin."

Zabini took up the parchment with an amused look. "Why would you be leaving notes for him here of all places?"

"I don't know," Draco snapped, "Thought maybe he'd fancy a big dish of beef chow mein! Just read the note, Z, you'll understand."

Zabini's amusement faded as he read and understood. When he looked up again, his brown eyes were sharp and sober. "This is serious, Dray? This isn't just someone arsing about to cause trouble for-"

"Oh, someone's arsing about all right; someone who wants to draw Potter out of hiding and thinks that capturing Lupin's just the way to do it. The international pelt bounty isn't high enough to bring the Italian guilds in by itself, so someone must be offering a personal contract." Draco didn't bother to cite that the 'someone' in question was almost certainly his own father, or that in all likelihood, the man's strategy was absolutely on target. Let anyone threaten Potter's little surrogate family and they'd find the hero after them faster than a snitch, no matter the danger. The big Gryffindor twit. "I overheard that Lupin had been in town today. Since then I've been leaving warnings everywhere I could think of that he might go. But there's been no sign of him."

Draco looked up in surprise as Mr. Fook slid a second bowl across the counter, this one in front of him. "Professor Lupin best customer. Too many strangers ask question today. Too many question." He swiped the counter with a rag, and gave the bowl another nudge. "Beef chow mein. Very good."

Zabini snickered and handed the note across the counter to Fook. "Eat, Dray, he's right."

Draco goggled. "Have you not heard a single word I've-"

"Heard," he slurped delicately, "And I get it. But you're forgetting something -- Professor Lupin _teaches_ dueling and defense. He handled himself just find through both wars, even when Order members were dropping like flies around him. He can handle a couple of foreigners tonight, even if they do get the drop on him."

"Not these foreigners," Draco said, "the Italian Bounty Guild is the oldest in Europe. They carry silver-cored ash wood wands -- all of them linked one to the other, so if the hunter needs to, he can bring the united power of his guild to bear in a fight." Draco took a bite of the food, chewing quickly and hoping it would look more as if he was nervous than starving.

"What, like the Dark Mark?"

Draco nodded. "That was what Vol... er, HE had in mind, I'm sure, but he couldn't get the actual spells out of the Guild, thank Merlin," he added nervously as Fook scowled. "Anyway, my point is that fighting one Guild hunter is more like fighting a hundred wizards." He took another bite, then gave up any pretence at delicacy and stuffed his mouth.

"And you said there were --?" Zabini slowly put down his chopsticks and bowl.

"Two, that I saw," Draco managed, "but they don't usually send more than that." _Because they never need to, _ he did not add.

"And you said you left word everywhere?"

"Everywhere but the auror's station and the Town Hall," Draco said, hoping Zabini wouldn't press the point until they were alone. He didn't want to explain the interesting tattoo on his left wrist to his new best friend, Mr. Fook.

The young wizard cocked his head. "Hogwarts as well?" He smirked as Draco grimaced at his own stupidity. "Hmph. You always did overlook the obvious, didn't you? Well, finish that and come on then. I'll apparate you in past the wards, and we can have the house elves wake the Headmistress."

"Apparate?" Draco mumbled, "Thought you couldn't-"

"Teacher." Zabini shrugged and paid Fook for both their dinners. "Everything changes, Dray, especially when Dark Lords fall. Board of Governors decided to change old Dumbledore's wards so Teachers could get on the spot when they were wanted. You all set?"

He wasn't. He was tired, nerve-wracked, foot sore, dying for a smoke, and he really really wanted to sit down and eat his dinner properly instead of bolting half and walking away from the rest. But Draco took a deep breath and reminded himself of what he stood to lose if his mission failed. Then he set the bowl down and brushed a grain of rice from his knee. "All right," he sighed, "let's go."

~*~

"Bounty hunters?" Minerva gasped, her wand faltering over Lupin's restored, almost-human mouth, "Here? Surely not!"

"Two of them," Lupin said, wincing as his jaw gave one final crack, "First I knew they were there was when the curse hit me." He shivered, huddled closer to the fire. "I managed to get away before the curse transformed me all the way, but Merlin, it was close."

"Hmph," Snape shouldered the Headmistress aside and peered closely into Lupin's eyes. "I believe I may take some credit for that. The wolfsbane built up in your system probably held off the silvercore's effects somewhat." Lupin glared but didn't bother to argue, because just then Rosemerta appeared with a gigantic mug of hot chocolate.

"Here you are, Remus love; and I put a bit of brandy in just for your nerves."

"Bless you!" He reached past Snape, ignoring the man's amused smirk until after he had taken a long swallow. "They cornered me twice after that. If they hadn't been trying to take me alive, I'd never have made it back here."

"But there have been no postings," Minerva dithered, pacing the tiny room, "the Ministry knows where to find you, there's no need whatsoever for them to send bounty hunters after you here, even if there were a scrap of excuse!"

"Stop being naïve, woman," Snape growled, "Weasley would have stopped any British bounty guild from accepting a contract on our war hero werewolf."

"They're from Italy," Rosemerta put in, kneeling to poke up the fire.

"How did you-"

"Someone left a message for you earlier this afternoon," she shrugged, abashed, "It seemed a bit of a wild story -- Italian bounty hunters in the pay of Death Eaters, of all things! So I didn't give it much credence. Now, however," she dug out the note and pressed it into Lupin's hand.

Snape and MacGonagall crowded close over his shoulder to read the missive, tickling the barely-restrained wolf under his skin with their warmth and the smell of their vulnerable humanity. He swallowed loudly and surrendered the note. The letters were blurring together anyway.

"I didn't recognize the man who left it, but he sounded a bit foreign," Rosemerta said, "Tanned, somewhat travelworn, but rather dishy in a strangely grubby sort of way. I could pick him out again if I saw him though -- he'd pretty grey eyes."

"Well, that's a help then," the Headmistress said with a steely glare, "Severus, please apparate back to the school with Remus. I'm going to take this note down to the auror's station and-"

"No!"

"Absolutely not!"

She blinked, taken aback by the two wizards' vehemence until Lupin explained. "Every time I try to use magic, I start to shift again. It's barely held in check as it is, if I apparate, Severus will have to fight me off the students."

"And much as I should love the excuse to curse you insensible, Professor Lupin," the Potions Master smirked, "your Gryffindors will likely kick up a fuss if I do it where they can see."

"Severus, behave," Minerva snapped, "The floo then --"

"Another poor idea," Snape interrupted, striding to retrieve his cloak from the hooks by the door, "The floo is almost definitely being monitored. And besides, the jostling would shake off any semblance of focus remaining in that scarred head of his."

"I _am_ still right here, you know Severus."

"So you are," he agreed with a fierce grin, "Get your cloak, man. I'm walking you home."

"Absolutely not! Severus, I absolutely forbid it!" Minerva planted herself in front of the door, arms braced over her chest. "You have already fought two duels today!"

"Then consider me warmed up. Lupin, your cloak."

"He was dueling?" Lupin gulped the rest of his chocolate and struggled out of the chair. "It was Umbridge, wasn't it? Why didn't you tell me you were going to challenge her? I'd have stood your second!"

"No, it was a couple of Death Eaters," Minerva answered without budging. "Which is quite enough for one day, I think! We are no longer at war, Severus, you cannot simply brawl in the street!"

"Then I shall be sure to keep to the verge," he replied, taking the werewolf's elbow.

"How do you expect to beat them without recourse to Unforgivables?" Minerva fired her last volley, knowing it was futile, "You'll have no duelist's covenant to keep you out of Azkaban this time. Let the aurors do their job, and stop this foolishness!"

He raised his chin and gave her a dangerous look -- not laden with fury, venom, or spite, but with a fierce joy that went farther toward intimidating her than any expression she had ever seen on that homely face. "Foolishness, Minerva? Foolishness would be to allow the aurors -- one of whom, I remind you, happens to be Harry Potter's best friend -- to get wind of this threat to Professor Lupin's safety. Foolishness would be to allow that reckless, impulsive prima don to spring this trap and expose himself to murder or capture because someone he loves is in danger."

"So you will put the both of you into danger then?" She snapped.

"No, Minerva, Snape's right," Lupin put in, "Whatever happens, we can't risk Harry coming after me. And he would -- you know it."

"Then I shall come along with you," she growled, reaching for her cloak.

"You'll do no such thing," Snape replied, "Someone must contact the rest of the Order -- put them on alert for more trouble, get the planning started. As Secret Keeper, that's you, old cat."

And the fact that he was right made the Headmistress even more furious with him. She moved out of the doorway with an air of pinned ears and tail-lashing about her. "Severus," Minerva snagged his sleeve as he passed, tried one final crumb of sense. "You're a Slytherin, man, stop being reckless! Think of tomorrow!"

He showed his teeth; not in a snarl or grimace, but in a predatory smile. "Oh, I shall, Minerva," he patted her arm, "I shall think of tomorrow every step of the way!"


	2. Act Two

"Well!" Blaise clapped his hands together and gave them a rub as the castle elf disappeared with a twinkle. "Looks like the old bat's gone walkabout. Nothing for it then, you'll simply have to bunk up with me for the night."

"Look, I don't want to be a bother," Draco tried, recalling that Zabini's idea of hospitality tended to revolve entirely around the contents of his liquor cabinet, and that he had even less tact, restraint, and sense when drunk than he did sober. "I've got a room back in Hogsmeade-"

"Pssh! None of that, Dray old boy," the young professor seized his elbow and hauled him off down the hallway. "I've a ripping bottle of DesNoirs et Severin '65 just begging to be cracked open and I know you won't leave me to suffer its tender mercies alone."

"Well actually, I'd rather thought I might keep trying to find Professor Lu-"

"Done what you could though, haven't you?" Zabini shrugged, rattling down the stairs and not seeming concerned when they swiveled to a new doorway halfway through. "What remains? Telling the aurors? Swooping down to his rescue? Since when are you a bloody Gryffindor, Dray?"

"Look, I'm just concerned, alright?" Draco snapped, though he did stop pulling backward. "And why do you keep calling me that? You do know it's a kind of cart, don't you?"

"Is it?" He asked as if he didn't care much and strode to a stop in front of a particularly risqué portrait of a shepherdess. "Well, here we are. Alohomora!"

Draco raised an eyebrow. "You've forgotten your password?"

"That was the password."

"But --" Draco blinked, then shook his head. "Nevermind. Just pour me a drink, Z."

Another clap and rub, and a twinkling grin. "Now that's the spirit -- or it soon will be, anyhow!" Draco laughed obligingly and then went to claim one of the two armchairs beside the fireplace while his host set about properly decanting the brandy.

Draco was impressed over all; his classmate managed to maintain the irrelevant smalltalk for nearly a full hour and most of the bottle of quite respectable brandy before giving in and asking the question that had been burning between them all evening. "So come out with it, Dray: what are you _really_ doing back in Hogsmeade? You know you can tell me."

"Why I came for the weather, didn't I?" Draco raised his snifter to the nightly rainstorm that was pattering at the study windows. "And the stunning cuisine, of course, because Merlin knows how I've missed vegetables that have been boiled so long one can drink them with a straw," he extemporized as Zabini began to giggle drunkenly. "And the things these goodly folk can do with organ meats -- well I mean where else can you find shaggy beef in haggis sauce, after all?" He warmed to his topic. Zabini struggled for breath, "And who could forget the even-handed and stunningly progressive law enforcement! Why you can't find open-minded chaps like old spit-on-the-pavement-and-it's-Azkaban-for-you-laddybuck Moody in Majorca now, can you?"

"Ger..." Zabini wheezed, fumbling his snifter and sloshing brandy across the table,"Germany, maybe!"

"Don't be silly," Draco grinned, righting the glass and topping both off, "Moody'd never last a day! German aurors have a two-jackboot prerequisite -- essential for proper goose step and arse kicking, don't you know?" He giggled himself as Blaise slid helplessly out of his chair. "No, seriously, Zabini, I'll tell you what brought me back to Merry Old England;" he leaned close as Blaise took a mouthful of brandy, managing a straight-face only by a massive effort of will. "The unimpeachably ethical political leadership."

Zabini's spit-take woke the fire with a bright blue roar. "And here I thought," he finally managed, holding his side and gasping, "that you'd just come back to try and seduce Harry Potter out of hiding! Consummate that unrequited crush of yours at long last!"

It was several appalling moments before Draco remembered to laugh at that, by which time the significance of his horrified expression managed to sink through to his host. Zabini hauled himself up, propped against the front of his chair and pointed at Draco accusingly. "Hang on! You're doing it, aren't you?"

"I'm not!"

"You are, you totally are!" Blaise did not stop pointing. In fact, the finger began to shake for emphasis as he noted Draco's pinking complexion. "You're shoving them over! Switching the leaf! Turning horses! Buying them out!"

"Selling them out," Draco corrected.

"SEE?"

"Oh, belt up Z," Draco growled, suddenly aware that he wasn't nearly drunk enough to be having this conversation.

"I will not! Where's my floo powder? That cow Parkinson owes me ten galleons!"

"What?" Draco grabbed the man and shoved him back into the chair. "You wagered on me with Pansy?"

"She said you didn't have the bollocks for it. I said you'd jump ship and disappear quietly long about the time you lost sight of your boyhood crush." He shrugged and grinned. "No brainer really. Though Greg thought you wouldn't bail until your dad went down in flames." Zabini gave him a drunken glare. "He isn't, is he? Because losing to Goyle would be just embarrassing!"

Draco leaned back into the chair and shot the rest of his brandy, not even taking comfort in the fact that it was far too fine a vintage for such disrespect. "Well, I'm sure you'll survive the indignity," he said gloomily.

"Surely," Zabini snorted vainly after the evaporating humour, "surely it's not _that_ bad..."

Draco only stared until the insipid, drunken smile cracked and fled. "There's a tumor in his belly, Z. It has a face. And it gives orders that the other Death Eaters obey." He swallowed hard against the bile that memory evoked, of the thready, childlike voice cursing and ranting, rolling obscenely under his father's silk waistcoat. "And it _moves,_. Not just a little, I mean it... jumps -"

Zabini held up a hand, going green in the firelight. "Hang on, Dray I really do NOT want to know this. I made my choice five years ago and that doesn't include Dark Lords or Unforgivable curses, or possibly going to Azkaban or getting tortured because somebody thinks I know too much." He shook his head, burped delicately and finished his drink. "So I'm just going to pretend we haven't talked about anything... ickier than you still mooning over Potter after all this time, all right?" Blaise pointedly emptied the last of the brandy into their glasses and then put his silly grin back into place. Draco couldn't help laughing.

"You just don't want to admit that Greg won your stupid bet!"

"I'm sorry, Dray, did you say something?" Zabini asked, waving his snifter about airily, "I wasn't paying attention."

"Prat!"

"Pillock!"

"Arse!"

"Well there you have me, Dray," Zabini toasted him with a wink, "You always did know your way about one of those. Now if only you can impress your expertise upon yon Boy Who Lived."

Laughing despite himself, Draco lobbed a throw pillow. "Will you stop going on about Potter? I swear, it's like you're obsessed!"

"Well one of us is, anyway."

"It's not that, alright? It's just... after everything I've seen, Z, after all the..." he shook his head, held up a hand as his host frowned. "No, I know; you don't want to hear. I just... I need to see that he's still around, right? Just to be sure there's still some fucking hope left, and that there's some _reason_ for me to be doing this. That there's something..." Draco looked down with a grimace for his own rambling sentimentality. _Merlin, I sound like a bloody Hufflepuff!_

But for once, Zabini didn't seem inclined to laugh. He leaned precariously across the distance and patted Draco's knee. "I know, Dray, I know. You want a hero, just like the rest of us."

And Draco found it was easier to nod silently than to try and explain that heroism wasn't what he wanted from Potter -- that he wanted to be sure the Boy Who Lived was safe, shielded, protected for once, instead of standing square in the path of the coming atrocity. That he wanted to wrap the irritating, aggravating, bigger-than-life Gryffindor in wool and warding spells so thick that nothing could ever slither in to harm him. So that one spark of hope he still held out might possibly survive.

So that something gold just might stay.

~*~

"Ah, back again, Severus!" Madame Rosemerta beamed as the morning breeze blew Professor Snape in her front door, "And so early too. Why after last night's heroics, I hardly expected to see you for a week!"

He grunted, scowling as the scents of baking bread and brewing tea all but bodily tugged him into the room. Due to Rookwood's nausea hex and his exhaustion once he'd finally won his way back to Hogwarts the previous night, Severus hadn't eaten anything since luncheon Saturday. This took just a bit of the shine off his sense of accomplishment, if not of anticipation. "Heroics indeed. It was hardly a fight at all." His stomach growled angrily as he turned to hang his walking cloak behind the door.

"Oh, you can't fool me with your vinegar," she beamed from the kitchen, "Young auror Weasley was here earlier you know, and he told me what they found when they picked those two foreigners up -- did you know you burned out their wands." She shook her head in wonder, piling scones onto a platter. "Beating both of them together, and with Professor Lupin not even able to help! What I wouldn't give to have seen it!"

Snape allowed himself a smile at her enthusiasm. "Better, I think, that you were not on hand. This way I shall be able to tell the tale as I choose without any witness to cry me false." She laughed at his joke and did not comment when he stole a corner off one of the scones. "I shall, however, have to regale you with my prowess at a later time, I'm afraid, as I've a meeting to attend this --"

"Oh, I know," she beamed, flicking her wand to send the food waltzing around the corner into the main dining room, "He's here already, waiting for you just through there." Snape followed her nod, and caught his breath. Through the private dining room's glazed door, he could see a very familiar shock of sable hair wisping softly into the curve of a long, tawny throat. Seeker-quick, lithe hands curled over the window frame as Potter fed bacon rinds to that bloody great owl of his, the two of them limned in morning's amber light.

It had been months since Severus had laid eyes on the brat, but time and distance had only intensified the kick in his gut, the twist in his breast, the arid scrape of his throat closing tight around wordless longing. _Steady on, Severus,_ he shook himself, _Don't let that meddling old cat make a fool of you now!_

And just then, Potter turned and the sunlight struck such a colour in his eyes that Snape saw nothing else for several seconds. The whole of the world was green, like flames doused with copper sulfide, like serpent scales and new leaves and sunlight through emeralds. Then the dining room door creaked open under Potter's push and mercifully, the spell shattered.

"Professor Snape, you're early," The young man flashed a smile, "but I'm glad to see you -- come in, everything's ready."

Severus entered, then stopped in surprise as he took in the heavily laden sideboard. "What is all this?" He asked, even as his eyes roamed over the spread; Poached eggs, golden toasted muffins, grilled tomatoes, mushrooms, sausages -- his stomach spoke up again as the spicy odor curled up around him. Barley porridge steamed beside a large crock of fresh blackberries and cream. There was even a platter of the almond pastries he could never get the House Elves to make often enough.

"Looks like breakfast to me," Potter smirked, handing him a plate. "I asked Dobby to find out what your favorites were. I hope you don't mind."

Severus most assuredly did not mind, but decided upon action as a better proof than verbal assurances. "I can see this is breakfast, Potter," he said as he loaded his plate generously, "I merely wondered at your intent behind providing it."

Harry, taking only the porridge and fruit, watched with a big grin as Severus reached the limit of his plate and went to sit. "It's a simple kindness Professor, nothing to be alarmed about," he carried the plate of almond pastries to the table and set it by Snape's elbow. "People sometimes do things like that for other people," a shy green glance, a furtive smile. Severus' heart squeezed. "For... friends."

_But we have never been -- I am NOT your -- Since when are --_ Severus chewed his food and his reflexive bitterness carefully. Potter, noting his silence, poured more tea into both of their cups. Severus realized the boy was waiting to hear what he would say -- that his words had not been impertinence, but an invitation. An olive branch perhaps. _Friendship..._

He took the teacup before Potter could put sugar in and washed twelve years of habit down his throat with the strong, black scald. "They do not tend to do such things for people like me," he managed a reply at length, "Not unless they want something." He raised an eyebrow and actually found himself relieved when Potter's cheeky grin returned.

"Well, I do want something, I made that plain enough..." the boy looked up from polluting his own teacup with milk and sugar and his brows drew down a little. "But you should finish eating first -- your aura's really quite dim just now, and..." the scowl deepened, and Severus felt his shoulders tightening, hardening up in wary anticipation, "Wait," Potter set his cup aside, "Wait, you're dampening it, shielding me out. Let me see."

"It's nothing, Potter," Severus growled, unnerved by that piercing gaze, "leave be."

"It's not nothing, it's two steps away from powershock!" Potter reached for his wand, breakfast clearly forgotten. "What happened to you?"

Annoyed and flattered in equal measure, Severus swatted the holly rod out of his face with the back of his hand. "There was a duel yesterday. I thought you'd heard."

Potter glared and swept his wand over again. "No, I saw that," he said as Severus parried again, "and I scanned you when the duel shield came down -- you weren't this bad then, not by half." Potter feinted with the wand, then grabbed Severus' left hand when he tried to counter the move. His fingers slipped between the silver wires and clumps of crystal to press like burning embers against Severus' skin. They both froze to feel the burn between them. "You can really hurt yourself like this, Snape. Why the hell aren't you resting?" Potter demanded after a stunned moment.

"Because you asked me to come, you infuriating brat," Severus jerked his arm free and shoved back his chair to stand, "Now I have done, I do not appreciate being lectured like a first-year for my trouble!"

Their standoff lasted for a long moment, then Harry sat down abruptly, gesturing for Severus to follow suit and staring neutrally until he did. "Firenze's taught me an excellent spell against powershock," the youth said evenly, carefully as he reclaimed his teacup and stirred, "I could balance your energy field again. Help avoid the three-day migraine you'll have coming on in about four more hours. Maybe help ground out the magic spikes as well, though you've left it a bit late, so I can't promise. Will you please let me cast it on you?"

_You've plenty to recommend you, after all;_ Minerva's words from the day before haunted Severus as he toyed with the last remains of his breakfast. _You're a hero several times over, and Potter knows it better than most. He's not a shallow boy anymore. Do give him the chance._

He looked up, caught and held Potter's green gaze levelly. "I will," he said, "If you'll let me see your hand. The right, please."

Puzzled, the young hero-turned-healer extended his hand, palm up. Severus took it, dry-mouthed, even though he was fairly certain that Harry Potter had never been taught (as he had in his childhood) that only lovers touched palm to palm. The skin was warm under his fingers, scarred and roughened from the hard work of his apprenticeship and, Severus supposed, from his habitual disregard for his own safety. Severus looked at the lines of the boy's palm for only a moment, tracing the long, sketchy arc of the life-line before reminding himself that he did not believe in such claptrap.

He turned the strong hand over, feeling tension flow in under the skin as he brushed aside the too-long sleeve, revealing a pale scrawl of scar. Severus understood at a glance the damage those words had done to the boy -- the trust he never bore for those who should have protected him, the aid he never asked, the pain he never showed. He mapped many deaths than one from that line of text, and silently vowed to make Umbridge pay for each one.

"I must not tell lies." Severus read aloud, smoothing a thumb over the words. His touch did not blur them even a little. They remained crisp and stark and white against those tanned knuckles.

Harry coloured, then looked down with a shrug and gently disengaged his hand. "Words to live by," he said, lying poorly with his careless tone, "But I'm a Gryffindor, so I can get away with being tactless -- people expect it of me." He took a sip of his tea, and came around the table to stand behind Severus. "So let's cast that spell on you now, shall we?"

And Snape sat still and let him, already combing his memory for the spells he would cast, the words he would say when next he saw Umbridge. A pleasant, predatory curl woke in his belly, so that Severus hardly registered that Harry was singing. A low, rhythmic chant drifted over his skin though, washing away the low-level pain and tension Severus had hardly registered before. Attention snared, Severus allowed his thoughts to be lured from his revenge. The sound, the magic caressed him, invoking memories of uncomfortable things, soft things, fragile things that hadn't stayed. The smell of bread and milk, of warm linen and starch, the press of pillowy arms around him when he was small enough to hide in her ebony curls.

By the time Potter stopped his infernal singing, Severus was a shaking wreck, bewildered at his own reaction to such a simple thing as comfort, as singing, as... no, he didn't dare think that. It was not love. Potter did not -- _could not_ love him. Severus picked up his teacup, took a long, steadying drink. The boy was a healer now, learning the ancient ways of the centaur Chirons as no human had done for generations. It was sympathy, pure and without deeper meaning. It wasn't love.

But he still had to finish his tea before he could trust himself to communicate beyond grunts. Silent and watchful, Harry poured him more and sugared it far too much. Snape drank it anyway.

"So then," he said at length, "what was it you wanted from me? And why couldn't this wait for an Order meeting?"

Harry -- no, Potter -- shrugged. "Wanted to talk without a crowd. Besides, I thought you'd be the only one to understand."

"When have I ever been understanding toward you, Potter?" He managed, after some difficulty, to fall back on his habitual gruffness.

Harry laughed. "That's the funny thing, isn't it -- you never have been. But I still trust you -- more than anyone."

Severus blinked. "More than Lupin?"

"Yeah. Isn't that odd?"

Severus snorted into his teacup. "To say the very least. So what did you want to tell me then?"

Potter looked down and unaccountably, blushed. "I've been dreaming again, Professor."

Severus went abruptly cold. "About Him?" He sat bolt upright in his chair. "Merlin! Of course we'd heard the rumors, but... reborn again already? And strong enough to overcome your occlumency?"

"No, not Him," Harry rushed to assure, "I mean...yes, him as well, and no, he isn't fully incorporated yet, but those dreams are nothing I can't deal with on my own, thanks to your lessons, Sir. These dreams are…" he looked resolutely into his teacup, blushing and fumbling for words, "different. Somewhat alarming, in fact."

Harry took a deep breath and flickered a glance up to Severus' gaze. "These dreams are…sexual in nature. And they're powerful. I can't tell whether they're projections from... from the person I'm dreaming about, or prophecy dreams, but..." white teeth caught that full lower lip, held on for a fetching moment while the boy stirred his lukewarm tea and Snape cursed Minerva MacGonagall to a frigid bed for putting foolish ideas into his head. Harry looked up at last, gaze open and pleading, "I need you, sir, to help me work out which it is."

"If -" Severus cleared his throat. "If it is prophecy, you will know it soon enough without any effort on your own. Why not just watch, wait, and see for yourself?"

Harry frowned. "Because if I do that, then he'll die. And I don't want him to die, the man in these dreams. I've known him for a long time. Saw him my first day at Hogwarts, and God, did we ever hate each other." A wistful smile overtook the boy's lips as he rambled on, somehow unaware of the havoc his words wrought within Severus' breast, "Oil and water, acid and base. I don't think we ever said one single nice thing about each other, but there was always _something_ there between us. I always just took it for hate, but so much has happened since then -- I've learned so much about real hatred, that now I don't think so anymore."

"And he doesn't hate me, if the dreams are right," Harry said, capturing Severus inside that clear green regard, a wasp in amber, a black moth pinned so that he could only flutter a nod. "He isn't sure he loves me, but he wants me, and he wants me to be safe." Harry stood, turned to the window, and lifted his face to the light there. "But he needs my help to make that happen, sir; if I let him love me, then I can save him. But if I don't, then he'll only be the first of many to die. I've seen that too, in the dreams; First the Order, taken one by one, then the Ministry. And then the whole world begins to fall." He looked back over his shoulder, pleading, beautiful, helpless once more in the face of destiny. "Do you see why I need you, Sir?"

Severus blinked away the spell, saved at the last by his title, cold and awkward on those lips. "Potter, they are just dreams," he said, "Love cannot save people."

"It saved me," the youth replied, stroking his dozing owl.

Severus ignored that truth and went on. "And besides that; what if… he … doesn't want your love out of mercy? What if he would consider that a humiliation worse than a thousand deaths?"

Harry frowned, thinking about that for a moment before shaking his head. "It wouldn't be mercy," he said, "I halfway love him already. It wouldn't take much to nudge me over the edge. Just a tiny little shred of proof that he loved me too might do it."

A child spoke from behind that wistful tone. Severus could hear an echo of his own loneliness and desperation there -- of a lifetime spent waiting in hopes of finding one eye that could see beneath the surface, one hand long enough to reach past the infamy, and steadfast enough to hold on. He stood, restless around the growing warmth in his breast. "How could he not love you?" He asked, "Everyone does. These are only dreams, Potter. If you wish to know the truth of them, then approach this man, your half-way-love, and simply ask him what he feels for you."

Harry grimaced. "He'd never believe me."

"Then tell him about these dreams of yours. Surely that will convince him."

"Not him. He doesn't believe in dreams." Harry turned from the window, and went to pour more tea, though both of their cups still stood half-full and abandoned. "That's why I need you to look, Professor... Severus. I need you to see them for yourself, and tell me if the dreams are sendings or prophecy. Because I'm afraid to hope, but I'm afraid not to hope." He returned to the table, sitting with a flop as though the weight of his confused emotions was too much for the young hero to bear. His eyes fixed on Severus then, full of some emotion the Potions Master had never found the need to learn by name. It was strong though, that emotion -- strong enough to burn him where he stood.

"I need to know what to do," Harry said, "and there's no one who can tell me but you."

"Harry." Severus took a step. "Who?" Another step, and he put his hands on the back of the boy's chair -- close enough to smell him, to feel the warmth that curled up from his body. "Who is in your dreams?"

And then Harry smiled. And then he blushed. Dropped his gaze and toyed with his spoon. "It's Draco Malfoy, Sir."

And then Snape had to turn away, coughing to cover the sound of his heart shattering.

~*~

By the time the road carried Severus back to Hogwarts, the world had righted on its axis once more. He took the winding path in a storming stride, each step drawing him further away from the seething, pathetic emotionality of the morning. It wasn't as though disappointment were a new thing for him, after all -- unfulfilled want was an old foe that had led him to more than his fair share of irreparable mistakes. The Dark Mark for a start, his service to Dumbledore for another. Severus, with half a lifetime's practice turning heartbreak into bitterness and disappointment into scorn, wasted no time on pathos.

Thus it was that the Professor Snape who returned to Hogwarts was merely an extremely foolish old man with a pathetic and hopeless crush instead of the walking tragedy who had left the Three Broomsticks that morning. And Potter was nothing more than an extremely foolish young man with a ridiculous and probably quite dangerous crush of his own. The young fool could not possibly have fixed upon a less likely object for his romantic obsessions than Draco Malfoy! That vain, selfish prat had never bothered to become anything outside his father's expectations of him, from grade point average through Dark Mark and fathering three full-blood bastards of which Severus was personally aware. Draco Malfoy was nothing but a tool -- Severus knew -- a catspaw from the day of his birth, groomed over 22 years with one purpose; to help Lucius Malfoy's reach exceed his grasp.

Draco Malfoy's loathing of Potter had been just about the only one of the youth's pastimes that he'd pursued with any enthusiasm whatsoever -- Quidditch only so far as beating Potter was possible, academics only by way of showing up Potter's friends. Severus could remember having to resist the urge to sharpen his tongue on the blond brat more than once when he'd walked in on brag-sessions in the Slytherin common room. He smiled grimly to himself, imagining the look on Potter's face should he have occasion to see those particular memories, to hear the vitriolic glee in his 'halfway-love's voice as he described Potter's reaction to the dementors, or the hateful, manic gleam in Draco's eyes he planned how best to abuse his authority as Umbridge's deputy. A vicious tool, grown to love its purpose. And Harry thought he would save him with love?

"Hmph. Merlin save us from romantic Gryffindors," Severus muttered, stripping a handful of leaves from a branch unwisely over reaching the road, "After all this time, you still cannot smell a trap, can you boy?" For a trap, it almost certainly was.

Lucius Malfoy, the rumours said, was closely involved with Voldemort's latest attempt at incarnation. And Lucius Malfoy had shown himself to have a shrewd grasp of Harry Potter's romantic, emotional streak. His attack on the Ministry, using the Black cur to draw Harry out of cover had proven that. Clearly this was simply more of the same -- an attack of legilimency coming under the guise of sensual dreams, which the isolated, lonely young man had no interest in resisting. Lucius was nothing if not subtle; spinning his webs and baiting his lures so carefully that his prey would come even if he knew himself to be doomed in doing so.

That was how he'd caught Severus himself, all those years ago, and even for the depth of pain and regret that one mistake had cost him, there were some days that he looked back and supposed he would make it again just the same. Loneliness was Malfoys' favorite weakness, and acceptance, approval, the hope of a love one could never actually win, his deadly arsenal. Faced with that, Gryffindor idealism had no hope of survival, nor Slytherin ambition any prayer of redemption.

"Fair bait to trap a hero, Lucius, I'll give you that," Severus growled, picturing the man's elegant face just where his heel came down in the road, "Something damaged enough to pity, and pretty enough to fancy worth the effort. And something you never valued on its own merit at all as well. You truly are a bastard!"

The only question on Severus' mind was how long it would take young Malfoy to appear in Hogsmeade. He would come, price on his head or no and he would find a way to let the news of his presence reach Potter as well, though every auror in England swarmed to Hogsmeade to hunt for him.

"Then you will find, young serpent," Snape addressed the misty hills about him as the winged boars of Hogwarts rose into view, "that I have resources at my disposal which no auror dares use. I will find you before Potter does. I will rip your plans from you, and then you will learn the game of nets and webs can be played another way." The idea pleased him; pretty young Malfoy dangling purple-faced and swollen tongued as his toes barely tickled the dust.

But then Harry's words returned to him, along with a flash of those vulnerable green eyes. _if I let him love me, then I can save him. But if I don't, then he'll only be the first of many to die._ And just like that, the Draco of his imagination went from dead to merely defeated -- disgraced, exposed and humiliated in his duplicity, categorically unable to convince that idiot Potter to make a mistake that would cost him his title of 'the Boy Who Lived'.

"So as usual, you wretched boy," Severus promised the green eyes in his mind, "I will save you from yourself. And as usual, you will most likely hate me for it."

Then the gates swung open for him and Severus squared his shoulders as the students ranged across the lawn all turned from their clumps and scatters to watch him. They murmured, whispered to each other as he passed, and their faces held awe for once rather than fear. So they'd heard then. He indulged in a grim smile, remembering when such expressions could never have greeted him no matter what he'd accomplished. Self-indulgent as it was, Severus found himself taking comfort in the pack of excited, rumour-gorged children trailing along behind him like a sticky-faced and grinning parade. But that didn't make him shorten his stride or acknowledge any of the little hooligans' cries for the story.

He looked up as he passed beneath the Headmistress's office window, caught sight of several figures pacing about behind the bulls-eye glass. Order members, most likely, come to Hogwarts for the news -- to discuss the attacks and debate about what to do with the Bounty Hunters. They would be expecting him there, he knew, and he decided suddenly that he did not care one jot.

"No fool like an old fool, indeed! You nearly convinced me to make an inexcusable fool of myself, old cat," he growled as he turned toward the dungeon entrance, "and for that, you can bloody well wait upon MY convenience!"

~*~

"And here we have the Slytherin common room," Blaise Zabini said, taking care to sound obscenely perky as he led the way through the portrait hole. He wasn't above exploiting the fact that, while a cheap drunk, he'd never had to suffer a morning after in his life.

Draco, hung over and hiding behind his smoked glasses, growled. "I've seen it before, you pillock. I did go to school here too."

"But we've changed it about," Blaise protested, waving his hand to take in the elegant room, "Look, that painting's new, isn't it? And the sofa there?"

"Isn't," Draco grumbled, "that's the same old vampire tart that Vince used to write all those bloody awful limericks about. And I happen to know Nott shagged you on that very sofa, because I still bear the emotional scars of having walked in on you!"

Blaise tsked, patted his old mate's arm. "It's only envy, Dray, you really ought to let it go." Then he laughed and ducked away as the surly man aimed a half-hearted swing at his head. "And anyway, we broke that sofa, so this one's definitely new. No, trust me, old man, there's a lot of things changed about here"

Draco snorted, but whatever his intended snark was meant to be, an even ruder noise from the far stairway distracted them both. "They certainly have done," put in a snide young voice, "time was, I understand, that a blood traitor would be smart enough to steer clear of Slytherin territory." Turning, Blaise scowled to find his least favorite students, Anemone and Alexian MacFarlane and their devoted sycophant Wallace Stroulger parading into the room with matching dramatic make up and derisive sneers.

"Ten points from Slytherin, Mr. MacFarlane," he sighed, "for using insults when you don't even know what they mean."

Alexian went red under his pale powder. "I know one when I see one, _Sir_." the boy hissed.

"What the shite?" Draco asked loudly, taking in the students artfully black clothing and excessive eyeliner, "Zabini, these little pimples don't actually belong here, do they?"

Blaise shrugged as the three went red and began to splutter, "Sad to say it, they were sorted in my first year teaching. And right little berks they've been, the three of them. Don't know what the Sorting Hat can have been thinking, actually."

"Laugh now if you want," Stroulger bulled forward, "but traitors like you and Snape will be the first ones up against the wall when HE comes back!" Blaise rolled his eyes at the same old crap, but then a flash of movement startled him 'round just in time to see Draco lunge out his wand and jab it under the fifth-year's soft throat.

"Steady on there," Blaise cried as the students gasped and froze like rabbits, "They're harmless idiots, Dray, nothing more!' He carefully reached for Draco's arm, "They're hopelessly unpopular, so they play this 'junior Death Eater' nonsense to try and pretend they belong to something. It's harmless."

"It's bloody well sick!" Draco spat, looming over Stroulger, "You think it's cool, signing your wand away to a monster? You think it's some social club, and when you're done playacting the blood just washes off?" The boy whimpered, but Draco jabbed his throat with his wand to shut him up. He bared his teeth at the twins, who were backing toward the stairs as though faced with a madman. Which, thought Blaise to himself, they might well be, actually.

"Dray." Blaise gripped the other man's arm, but didn't' relax when Draco's wand dropped, remembering Draco's fearsome dueling speed. "They're children."

Draco sneered. "Then here's a clue for you, _children_: mudbloods and muggles sound just like wizards when they scream. They piss themselves just the same when you torture them. Ask me how I know, you foul little pieces of distended rectum," he hissed, "Go on, ASK ME!"

"DRACO!" Blaise shouted, "Stop threatening my students, or I'll hex you through that wall and let the giant squid sort you out!" He stood his ground before the red-rimmed glare, pointing at the sofa in the darkened corner. "Sit. Now. And YOU three," He turned to glower at the three who'd started the trouble Draco stormed away, "Detention, right this minute! Go and help Professor Hagrid muck something out. Something smelly."

"You can't throw us out of our _own-_"

"Detention? But it's Sunday-"

"No FAIR!"

"Professor Zabini? Can I please death curse all three of them?" Draco whined a perfect imitation from the corner.

Blaise ignored him, pointing the students toward the door. "You're Slytherins, children, I suggest you get used to the fact that 'fair' only happens to other houses. Now unless you want to turn one detention into a week's worth, I suggest you march!"

They did, and Blaise returned to the dim corner to find his friend snickering. "Does Snape know you steal his lines?" Draco asked, propping his heels on the ottoman.

"Me?" Blaise took the facing chair. "I wasn't the one quoting from the 'reformed Death Eater manifesto just now. And you're not going to get very far with this turning coat thing if you let a few brats playing dress-up get under your skin, you know. Even Snape can tell the difference between a real threat and a few kids playing Silly Buggers."

Draco sighed, lowered his head into his hands as though it ached. "You're right of course, it's just... you don't know how different things have gotten, Z, how totally arsed up mad they've all gone."

"They were too mad for me five years ago, Dray," Blaise said, trying not to pity his friend, "Too mad by half. It can only have gotten worse, I reckon." Then he shook his head. _Not talking about this!_ he reminded himself, and recovered his smile, "But anyway, this concludes the Dungeon Tour -- Next stop, the new and improved Quidditch pitch." Draco groaned but Blaise hauled him to his feet anyway. "Come on, up you get, bit of fresh air and sunshine'll do you good!"

"Burst into flames, why don't you, Zabini?" Draco stumbled, but followed to the portrait hole.

Blaise laughed and waved the portrait hole open. "Don't make me take points from Slytherin. I can, you know--" He stopped as a wall of childish babble echoed into the room from the hall outside, followed closely by a squall of excited children tumbling in. "Here now!" Blaise hauled one third-year aside, "what's all this then?"

"It's Professor Snape, Sir," the girl bounced, "He saved Professor Lupin's LIFE last night! Fought off a hundred Death Eaters all by himself because Professor Lupin was almost dead, and I heard his leg was cut all the way off, but it's not now anymore, so Podmore was probably lying unless he grew it back. Can werewolves do that, Sir? And Bruce says there were dementors too, and they were after the school because Harry Potter's meant to be here, but Professor Snape fought them all off, and Lister Fromme's just gotten the Professor to promise he'll tell us all about it soon as he gets back to the Common Room, and he's coming right now!"

Bemused, he released her back into the flow, and turned to Draco. "Nice to see they make as much sense as ever," he began, then the other man's horror-stricken expression registered, and he found himself leaning out into the hallway to see what had so affected him. Snape was coming -- not his normal storm of swirling robes this time, but rather more a bobbing black stick being herded along in the middle of the babbling river of students. Blaise gasped as Draco's hand closed like a vise on his arm.

"Fuck, get me out of here, Z!" he hissed, "The tunnel from our old room -- is it still-?"

"Too late, old man," Blaise grimaced and bundled Draco back into the lightless corner where the least comfortable chairs had been banished. Draco snatched up someone's abandoned copy of the Daily Prophet on the way and hunkered down behind it as the Head of Slytherin House was herded into the room. His black eyes glittered with amusement even as he leveled his fiercest scowl at all present, shaking off hands and questions with equal sharpness, but without the savagery Blaise would have expected in his own school days. Yes, victory had certainly mellowed the old man, hadn't it?

"I will not speak over this bedlam!" The Potions Master's stern voice stilled the room, "Nor shall I repeat myself twenty times for the sake of the stragglers. Find your seats, the lot of you, and I will begin presently."

"But were there really a hundred Death Eaters, Sir?"

Snape glowered. "Reaves, there are not a hundred Death Eaters left alive in the world. Now do, please stop making your House look bad by exposing your ignorance of recent history."

"But sir," another student pressed forward as the first slunk away, "Why Professor Lupin? I mean everyone knows you hate him."

"Foolish question," Snape smirked evilly, "Why should I pass up a chance to have the head of a rival House under life debt? Let that instruct you, Mr. Wood, in that your grudges ought never to outweigh your opportunism."

This brought on another barrage of questions, and Blaise couldn't help grinning as Draco peeked out from behind his newspaper. "Merlin, is he _still_ on about Lupin? I thought they'd have settled all that rot working on the same side in the War."

"Pshh! You didn't really buy into all that nonsense, did you, Dray?" Blaise whispered back under the noise. "I don't think they ever hated each other."

"Well, Lupin did try to kill him-"

"And I remember you trying to kill Potter more than once."

"Shut up, that's not the point!"

"Anything you say, Cleopatra," Blaise grinned, "now be quiet, before someone sees-" But just then, Draco swore and ducked back behind his paper. Turning, Blaise startled to see a positively enormous eagle owl stooping into the room with a letter in its talons. _I recognize that bird,_ he realized as the children screamed and ducked away from its massive wings. "Isn't that your father's bird, Leonidas?" He asked aloud as it dropped its letter in Snape's general direction and winged back out the door.

"Fuck'ssake, Z!" Draco sank even lower behind his paper, "Price on my head, remember? You want to shut up now?"

Across the Common Room, Snape had snatched the letter from the hands of a well-meaning sixth year, and was running his wand over it, ignoring the babbled questions as he cast spell after spell at the unassuming square of paper. As his examination went on, the students began to realize that his excessive care might be an indication of danger, and they quieted, backed away to give him room to work. Blaise was just on the point of heading over to offer his own wand to the investigation when the Potions Master evidently decided his paranoia was satisfied, and ripped the envelope open.

Beside him, Blaise felt Draco flinch at the rending sound.

The Common Room had been quiet before, but it was achingly silent now, every eye fixed on Snape's face as he read. Even Draco peeked out to watch the pale face go white with fury, his eyes glittering in the depths of a ferocious scowl. Blaise half expected the thing to burst into flames under that regard. Whatever was in that note, it had Snape angrier than the young Charms professor had ever seen him, and given that he'd gone to school with Potter, that was saying something.

Draco grabbed his sleeve as he got to his feet, hissing. "Zabini!"

"Sh," he hissed in return, "He is going to lose it any second now, and _they_ do not need to see that. Now let me go!"

"Damn it, Z-"

"Professor Zabini." Both of them froze at Snape's arctic tone. "What brings you to the Common Room today?"

Cursing Draco inwardly, he shook loose his sleeve and turned to grin. "Oh, nothing. Was just giving a bit of a tour, got bottled up by all the little sprogs coming in to congratulate you. But we were just heading out to the Pitch," he kicked Draco's ankle to urge him to his feet, "so we'll be leaving you to your rather rapt audience now, and just-"

"A tour?" The precise, polite words tolled the death of any hope Zabini had of getting his friend out of the room unnoticed. Stalking as only he could, the Potions Master closed the distance, putting himself between their corner and the portrait hole, "Do, please introduce me to the visiting dignitary who so deserves to see Slytherin's domain?"

"Well," Blaise coughed, hoping Snape would remember that Draco had always been his particular pet in school, "of course you remember-"

"Arkwright!" Draco shot to his feet, smashing the paper into one hand so he could extend the other. "Luther Arkwright at your service, Professor, and thank you for the pleasure of your hospitality this morning."

Snape had hold of that reaching hand faster than a striking cobra, and a blind man could not miss the fierce clench that rippled across his bony knuckles as he drew the younger man close. "Mr. Arkwright," he smiled, biting off each syllable between yellowed teeth which might have been bared in a grimace or a smile, either one. Blaise could see the Draco fighting the urge to wince, the muscle in his jaw flexing under his fixed smile. "I'd been warned to expect your arrival," Snape held up the mysterious note and behind his smoked glasses, Draco's eyes went wide with alarm, "just not precisely when. Do, please, join me in my office, where I can welcome you _properly_."

~*~

"He's a Death Eater!" Snape growled, slamming both fists on his desk.

"He's my friend!"

Snape was not impressed. "Then by association, you are no less suspect!"

"Then _you're_ a bloody IDIOT!" Zabini displayed his Italian temperament, shouting back in the Potions Master's face. From his position, trussed and petrified on the floor, Draco could see the spittle flying between them. "It was Draco who got me out of the country when my mother tried to force me to take the Mark! And I happen to know he did the same for Parkinson and Goyle, at great personal expense and no small risk to his own skin! Without him, we'd all have been killed in that bloody war you're so proud of!" The younger professor swept his arm across the desk, launching scrolls, quills, ink and potion bottles to smash on the floor. Draco couldn't even flinch away from the cold splatter across his face. "And so yes, I think that proves friendship pretty well by anyone's measure!"

Snape recoiled with a sneer, folding his arms across his breast and glowering down his nose. "Ah yes, and friendship counters all sins, does it, Zabini? Yes, I mark your canine manner of making friends --"

"Canine?" The younger man bared his teeth just like, "Yes, with loyalty-"

"With a sniff, rather! You'll roll in shite for any pleasant voice or open hand!"

"Is that so?" Zabini replied, red-faced and reckless, "Well _I_ never let a 'friend' who despised me talk me into taking the Dark Mark, did I? And I never handed my life over to a madman who thought I was nothing but a weapon either!" The moment the words escaped his lips, he paled and looked as if he wished he could somehow snatch them back out of the air. Snape, on the other hand, went still as a stone, eyes blank and shuttered.

_That's torn it, Z,_ Draco thought wearily, wishing he could blink, _Remind him of my father and Voldemort. Way to get me turned over to the Ministry in pieces!_

Blaise, however, didn't have the sense to shut up. "I'm a Slytherin, Professor Snape. You taught me to value my skin very highly, and I learned that lesson well," he said into the tense silence, "I'm also quite good at spotting things which are a threat to it, which _he_ is not."

That drew Snape's focus and he sighed, looking suddenly tired. "It is not your safety, Zabini, which concerns me. Here," he slid a square of parchment across the newly cleared desk. "Read the note."

Draco watched Blaise's face cloud as he did so. Then his friend shot him a nervous glance and Draco nearly despaired until the young Professor straightened and pushed the note back. "Lucius Malfoy is a lying prick, Sir, and I think by now you'd know that as well as anyone. Draco isn't here on his orders, and I know for a fact he isn't here to try and get to you."

"No," Snape's voice curled around Draco's stomach and squeezed, "I rather guessed he was here to try and get to Harry Potter instead." He rounded the desk, black eyes fixed on Draco as though he were an insect about to be trodden under, "That's your ambition, isn't it? To simper and smile and win his confidence, then break his _fidelis_ charm from within? Are you meant to hand him over dead, Mr. Malfoy, or does your esteemed father want him kept alive for delivery?"

If Draco could have moved, he'd have attacked Snape with his bare hands. In fury, in desperation, in disgust at how much of his life he had wasted in making such things easy to believe of him. As it was, he could only twitch and scream silent obscenities against his stinking, brilliantly mad father inside his head. Because somehow, Lucius had guessed what Draco meant to do, and he'd poisoned his only hope for success.

Once again, it was Zabini who broke the tableau. "It's not like that, Snape," he said, calm, reasonable and confident, "Draco doesn't want to see Potter brought down. He's in love with him for Merlin's sake. No, don't roll your eyes, this isn't some convenient story, he is -- has been since third year -- sending him notes in class, drawing pictures of him, following him and his friends about all the time. We used to give Dray no end of grief over it." Blaise drew his wand, held it out with two fingers, "He made it pretty plain last night that hasn't changed, so whatever it is he wants with Potter, I'm ready to bet my wand that it doesn't involve Potter getting hurt."

Snape looked at the wand for a long moment, then turned his glittering eyes to Draco for an equally weighing time. Then, robes sighing about him, he stood in one fluid movement and waved the other Professor toward the door. "Go away, Zabini," he growled, beckoning a chair from the corner, "Oh, don't look at me so, I know better than to kill a man in my quarters without a witness willing to swear I acted in self defense. I am merely going to satisfy myself as to Mr. Malfoy's intentions, and I do not care for an audience."

Which somehow failed to calm Draco's nerves at all.

Blaise shot his friend a hopeful smile, and turned to lay his wand on the desk. "Take it and go, you fool," Snape growled, "You're acting like a Gryffindor, and I find it highly irksome!"

"Hmph. No call to be insulting!"

"Out. I shall notify you by floo when I've made my decision." A wave of Snape's hand slammed and locked the door on Zabini's heels. Another erected a sound ward, and a third, a spell barrier almost as tough as a duel shield. Draco's stomach gave a twist when he thought of all that wandless magic, and that Snape didn't even seem to give it a second thought.

"Now then, Mr. Malfoy," Snape leaned down to tap his lips with his pale willow wand, "let me hear what you have to say for yourself."

Draco took a moment to work his cramped jaw before answering. "Why should I bother?" he asked, "It's plain you think I'm going to lie, so just bring out the veritaserum and let's do this properly."

"Oh, we shall do it properly," Snape assured him, rolling his wand back and forth between fingers and thumb, "but I have a stronger tool a my disposal than drugs for that. So tell me this much, Malfoy, and I will know the truth of it shortly, so do not bother to dissemble; have you been taught occlumency?"

Draco frowned, sorting out the Latin. "What makes you think Lucius would allow me to learn something that would help me hide things from him?"

But Snape only smiled in a truly unpleasant way, pointed his wand at Draco's head, and said "_Legilimens_!"

~*~

_Dear Professor Snape,_

I'm sorry I shouted at you, and that I made you so angry. I should have expected that you'd think me stupid and reckless, but I do wish you'd actually taken a look -- had actually seen for yourself what I've been seeing every night for months now. Still, I guess I have to respect that you didn't care to, even if I don't exactly understand why.

But there is something I do have to mention; something I didn't get the chance to ask you before you stormed off. It's about Professor Lupin. I can guess the face you're making already and I promise it's nothing embarrassing, but it has to do with my dreams. You see, someone's going to try to kill him, and I'm certain it's going to be soon -- before the moon is three-quarters full, in fact, because I always get a clear look at it. I also see the attackers very clearly in my dream: a witch and a wizard whom I don't recognize, working together in a magical style I've never seen before. They hide in the woods along the Hogsmeade road, and they find him when he's alone. I think they intend to capture him; perhaps they think he's my Secret Keeper -- I don't know for certain, but I do know that somehow they force him to transform against the moon.

I know, that's meant to be impossible, but Firenze says he has seen it done in his lifetime, and there are werewolves in the Forest who agree. Perhaps this is the way to convince you that my dreams are truth, Professor, but I don't want Remus to die. And he will die, if they catch him alone. They won't want to kill him, but he'll infect one of the two when they make him change, and the other one will kill him.

So please; as a personal favor, or just to prove that I'm the idiot you always said I was, please don't let Remus walk to Hogsmeade alone. Just for a week, just until the moon turns full and finds him still alive. If you want, I'll let you laugh in my face, and not say a word about it. It'll be worth it just to know that you're looking out for the only family I have left, because if anybody can keep him alive, it would be you.   
And I'm sure you'll agree, Professor, that's just ironic.

Thank you for your time, Sir,  
Sincerely,  
Harry Potter.

~*~

"Wake up."

Draco gasped, shuddered, and curled harder against the strident voice, against the pounding, strobing images it shocked through his brain. He groaned, transfixed by echoing memories he'd hoped he'd buried years ago, battered flat by the worst his life had to offer. He was almost grateful of the hands that hauled him up off the floor and centred him with a slap across the face.

"Gah," he managed, blinking and wondering why his face was wet, "What was that for?"

Snape curled his lip and seized Draco's left wrist, turning it to the light. "That was for taking this Mark even though you knew better," he growled, then backhanded him again. "And that was for ignoring everything I tried to teach you about self-preservation."

"Ow," Draco observed, though privately acknowledging that he probably deserved it. "Stop it." Then he lurched to the side as Snape abruptly let him go. Dizzy, he could only pant weakly as his head continued to throb, as the memories continued to tickle and prod at his consciousness. His father's face a constant feature in this parade, his voice a polyphony of half-forgotten treats, flatteries, and insincerities. "What did you do to me?" He asked, shaking his head.

Snape pressed a phial into his hand with a snort. "Nothing. You did it to yourself, even though you knew better. Idiot boy. Now drink that. He's waiting to hear from you."

Draco blinked at the dose, then shrugged. If Snape had meant him to die, he'd been helpless enough just minutes ago. He choked it down, and wasn't really surprised when the mental din receded. He blinked, shook his head, then sat upright as Snape's words made it through the daze. The Potions Master stood beside the fireplace, feeding bacon to a massive snowy owl. Draco's mouth went abruptly dry. "He? That's not…?"

Snape did not look around. "Yes. He knows you're here, and he thinks he knows why. And, proving himself just as foolish as ever, he wishes to meet with you."

"Then you're not going to…" He let the question wither under a fierce black glower. Of course. If Snape wasn't going to poison him, then he wasn't going to betray him to the aurors either. Whatever he'd thought he'd find sorting through the ghosts of Draco's life, it apparently hadn't been what either of them had expected. A pressure bubbled up into his throat, a ridiculous urge to giggle, which he only just managed to choke down. "Fuck, Sir, I thought I was dead."

"Hmph. A reassuring glimmer of sense. My heart leaps with confidence," the owl cooed, nipping at the long, stained fingers as they stroked her feathered breast. Snape's lip twitched, perhaps a flicker of smile, but it looked more like a grimace to Draco.

"Understand me plainly, Malfoy; I do not trust you. No, spare me your protestations. I have no doubts as to your noble intentions, nor do I doubt that you are suitably motivated to escape the lot you accepted with that brand on your arm."

Snape held up the note, and even from across the room, Draco recognized his father's elegant looping script. "This proves that even when you believe that you act on your own, you are anticipated. You are a mule, Draco Malfoy, and I have no doubts whatsoever that if you walk into Harry Potter's presence, it will be precisely what your father… and that perversion he carries within himself intend to happen."

Draco went cold, then scrambled to his feet. "No! I can't -- I don't dare be in the same room with him!" Snape raised an eyebrow, and Draco flushed, suddenly angry. "I was trying to get him a message, damn you! Just a message that he's in danger, just to warn him what my father and... what my father is trying to do. I never wanted to-"

"Having just examined your wants rather closely, Malfoy," the old man smirked, "I think I can say without fear of contradiction from any here present that you wanted to do significantly more to Harry Potter than just compare strategic notes and drink tea. Oh, stop blushing! How could I possibly have overlooked an entire adolescence of wank fantasies orbiting that particular young man? You want him, we will have that much plain between us."

Draco clenched a fist, looked away. "Well, it's good to want things. I'm told it builds character."

"Stubbornly self-sacrificing? You?" Snape asked, "When the man you so desire is asking to meet you privately? Had you not been here for three hours already, I'd wonder who you'd be when the polyjuice wore off."

"You know why, damn it!" Draco shouted, "You looked, I felt you! You saw that... that thing, and--"

"Voldemort."

Draco shuddered and gripped his wrist. "Don't. Please." A long, shaky breath, and he could continue. "I know you looked at my memories of my father. I know you saw what's happening to him; how the thing inside him seems to be burning him up, body, mind, and soul."

Snape nodded. "That was the way Quirrel went. Toward the end, he could barely manage to teach his classes, or sit through meals in the Great Hall. Your memories of your father show the same sort of dissolution-"

"But did you look at my mother?" He almost couldn't make himself ask it, almost couldn't weather the shaky fear that sweated across his skin at the memory. Snape's silence went for answer, so he took a deep breath and explained. "The week before I left Spain, I heard its -- His -- voice in Mother's room, and her voice answering. I thought my father was there, and that she...well. I had a message for Father, so I went in, only," Draco pressed a nervous hand to his throat and wondered if he might be ill, "Only it was in her. The face. Just there, in her right breast, with teeth, and eyes, and a tongue... Oh Merlin..."

He turned, found Snape standing there with a basin as he heaved up what remained of Zabini's booze. "I knew it was trying to work out how to jump, but now..."

"Now he can," Snape confirmed with a growl. "That sheds a rather sinister light on your father's invitation for me to return to the fold, I suppose. Any of the others beyond her?"

Draco shook his head and spat one last time, wishing desperately for a cigarette. "Not that I've seen. And she slept for almost three days after it went back to father. It seemed weakened as well, so perhaps it can't be done often, but you see why I don't dare be alone with Potter?" Merlin, but those words were bitter to say!

Snape's eyes seemed to understand as he flicked his wand over the basin and banished the mess. "Well, I am disappointed again. After all these years, I'd thought surely you would not underestimate my ability to cheat the odds." Returning to the desk, he brought out parchment, ink, and quill. "There. Make your assignation with Potter and trust that I have your safety and his well in hand." Snape held up his left arm, still encased in the strange contraption of silver and crystal which Draco had noticed the day before.

"That's how you did it," Draco realized with a shock, "That's how you fought the Call in the Wiltshire battle. What does it do? It looks too fragile to block all dark magic from-- but no, that's your wand hand, and I saw you casting the death curse on the battlefield."

"Hardly anything so crude," Snape assured him, turning his wrist to the light as Draco bent to examine the device. He could make out hair-thin runes scratched into the metal, spiraling without end across the silver gleam. "Flitwick and Vector made this -- master work from the both of them, though they've received no acclaim beyond my own personal gratitude. This device is attuned to my Mark, as you'd guessed. It captures any magic the mark puts out, focuses and distils it through the crystals, and then channels the power directly into my wand."

"But your wand's unicorn hair," Draco frowned, "I remember Father teasing you once at the Manor. How can it take such dark magic without shattering?"

"It's a kind of magic, Malfoy," Snape dropped his arm and the encasing device from view once more. "How does hatred become love? How does scorn become trust? How does resentment become desire?"

"I don't know," Draco said, "but it does."

"Somehow, it does," Snape agreed. "And the mediwizards for the St Mungo's Veterans' ward appreciate my regular donations of medical potions without needing to know that the power behind them came from the last remnant of the Dark Lord."

"Can... Could one be made for me?" Draco was almost afraid to think it. That something existed which might be able put him beyond his father's reach was almost too sharp a hope to bear.

"It is a complicated device, Malfoy, but it is no Philosopher's Stone. Having made one, I am certain they can make a second." Snape stood, brushing invisible lint from his robes as he turned for the door. "Write to Potter. I shall go and see if any of Filius's notes have survived young Zabini's lamentably careless filing system."

"Sir?" He paused on the threshold, and Draco forced the unfamiliar words from his throat, "Thank you. For believing me. For --" he nodded at the owl, who watched them both with lambent yellow patience, "For everything. I still don't know why you're helping me, but-"

"You never will, Malfoy," Snape replied without turning, "leave it at that."


	3. Act Three

_Potter.  
Snape said you wanted to see me. Well I've some things to tell you as well, so name the place, and I'll be there.  
D.M_

~*~

A little further down, a more elegant hand added:

_Mr. Potter.  
While I remain convinced that you are well on your way to setting up a typically Gryffindorish comedy of errors, I have this at least to offer you. I have examined young Mr. Malfoy, and have satisfied myself that he is not intent upon doing you harm. And too, he does seem to have information that could benefit you. Meet with him, but make it soon; such farces as this tend to lose all entertainment value when they drag on too long. I would hate to find you tiresome after all these years, especially when I haven't even any popcorn to comfort me.  
Regards,  
Severus Snape._

~*~

Later that night, a great snowy owl brought the reply.

_Draco.  
I'll be at the Three Broomsticks in Hogsmeade tomorrow morning. I'll wait there for you until teatime, but no later than that. They will only tell you where I am if you come in by floo from the school -- have to be careful these days, as I'm sure you understand.   
Sincerely,   
Harry Potter._

Postscript;  
Please tell Professor Snape I appreciate his advice and will keep it in mind.

~*~

"Your moon is balanced between the arms of Ophiucus, colt," Firenze said as Harry prepared himself for the trip into Hogsmeade, "and Venus eclipses your Chiron completely. You must tread with care just now; balance your steps between danger, despair, and death. Only a light step will see you through, though I think perhaps this is not unknown to you."

"I know," he nodded, kneeling to button the shoes he hardly ever wore anymore, "Draco's always hated me and there's every reason why I shouldn't trust him. But you're always telling me that my resonance will guide me, and this is the most sense I can make out of it." He stood, walked to where his Secret Keeper dozed on her perch. She gave a sleepy hoot when he stroked her soft breast feathers and climbed onto his shoulder to nuzzle into his hair.

"Believe me," Harry said to the centaur, "I understand what I'm risking here. But Snape's cleared him, and he wouldn't have done that if there wasn't a very good chance that I'm right about all this." He tried to look confident rather than confused and hopeful. "Are you going to forbid me?"

His tutor gave an amused snort. "And thereby insure your disobedience, colt? No. I merely ask that you walk with care. Put your trust in the old serpent -- he will see you safely back to your studies when all this is past." He loomed close, leaned down to press his forehead to Harry's -- a familiar farewell such as the centaurs shared only amongst their own herdmates.

Harry, conscious of the honour, closed his eyes and leaned into the weight, breathing in his teacher's flower-sweet breath and earthen, comforting stability. "I will, Firenze," he promised. Then he strode from the cave, turned his face to the town and disapparated.

~*~

He should not have been surprised, Snape reflected later on. He had worn the warding device for years, and it was keyed to resonate to his wand, after all. The encounter between two old enemies-turned-starcrossed-lovers could only have been rife with the strongest emotion and magic. He should have expected some bleed-over -- should have prepared against it, not found himself flat-footed and under emotional siege in the middle of his Monday morning classes.

But he hadn't expected it, which meant that all he could do was curse the pair soundly as confusing splatters of sensation and perception burst over his head. Each one was like a distilled moment -- glimpses of a room with a bed in one corner and a table set with food in another. Nervous anticipation. The taste of leek soup and awkward silences filled up with habitual attitude. The warding focus seemed to be sending Severus fractured elements of the encounter at such random intervals as to make it impossible for him to brace himself against them.

His third-year class found him stumbling over the lecture, interrupted by the strident sound of Draco's voice in his head and the wary, defensive look in Potter's eyes as he answered in kind. The words were garbled, both his and theirs, but one thing was clear; neither the lecture nor the assignation were going well.

If anything, the situation was going absolutely pear-shaped. Knowing both young men as he did, Snape put the odds quite high of one of them punching the other in the mouth before the interview was finished. He would have found it highly amusing if it hadn't been disrupting his classes and making his students snicker and whisper.

He did his best to block out the bleed-over, but occlumency wasn't much use when the invasion was coming from his own wand. Try as he might, Severus still found himself overcome by moments of shaking outrage, hurt confusion, and the sugary smell of Potter's too-sweet tea. And, damn it, stammering aloud under the influx.

Finally, Snape set his classes to book study and essays while he pretended to grade exams. It was easier to buffer himself against the emotional reactions if he actually looked for the contact, and braced against it when it came. And it was easier to eavesdrop shamelessly when he could snort and smirk and shake his head over a blank sheet of parchment, writing rude observations in red ink as the polyphony ebbed and flowed about his brain. And if his students assumed his occasional snort of amusement reflected their impending grades, well at least they kept their noses down and didn't pester him.

Before long Snape found that if he concentrated, he could almost make out words.

Something about smelling like an animal. Something else about hair colour, subtlety, and leather pants. Offense, fury, insult. 'Why are you acting like this?' Snape almost laughed. _Why indeed? How else did you imagine a nervous Slytherin would act? Had you expected poetry and roses perhaps?_ Serpents only used thoughtless, easy tricks like that when the stakes were low and the outcome for mere amusement. Sincerity was much more difficult and much more dangerous.

'-Didn't come here to fight with you, you bloody ponce!' And this delivered in a shout. _Smooth, Malfoy. You'll win his affections over straight off with insults like that. Why not throw something at him as well? That petulant scowl I can see in the mirror makes you look every inch the spoiled brat. And he's right, by the way; you look ridiculous with brown hair._

A student coughed at his shoulder. Snape jumped, slapped his hand over the parchment and looked up with a glare. One of his Slytherins hovered there, white-faced and terrified as she stammered some nonsense about class period being over, it being lunchtime, and could they please be excused?

"Since you are clearly all too stupid to attend to your own schedules without my overseeing you," he growled at the silent fifth-years, "By all means leave my classroom at once." The relief in their faces was profoundly amusing. Snape allowed himself a smirk at the speed with which they cleared their desks and evaporated from the room.

Then a wave of anger-desire-fear swept over him as the last one bustled out. A burning pain of impact on his right palm. A crash. Disbelief and self-horror slammed into his gut as a shout of alarm echoed in his ear. _What he devil have you idiots done now?_

He focused his will and found himself breathless. Kissing. A clash of teeth and tongues, grinding hard against a fiercely rigid body. Breath like fire in the nose, cock like a bar of iron pressed against the belly. Desperation. Desire.

"No!" Severus shouted, hurling his crimson grading ink across the room, "I will not see this!" And then his back throbbed in just the way it would have done if he'd been knocked unceremoniously onto his arse. Anger crashed suddenly into white-edged terror. Snape's heart raced in sympathy.

His mind gave him an image of Potter's back, right fist buried wrist-deep into the wall plaster and his robes splattered with soup and bits of crockery. The words came through clear and low this time, rumbling with barely restrained anger. Chilling, even from one-remove. 'I'm going to have that bath now, Malfoy. We can talk about whatever you came to tell me when I'm done." Then he stalked from the room and slammed the door.

And so, when Draco burst out of the Floo in Snape's quarters three minutes later, he found the Potions Master awaiting him with a superior smirk.

"Let me guess," Snape said as the youth got up and dusted himself off with furious strokes, "Potter took one look at your leather pants and expressed his undying devotion to you as the air resounded with singing cherubim?"

For a second, Snape actually wondered if Draco would attack him. He hadn't decided how he felt about that when the youth suddenly turned and collapsed into a chair, covering his face with both hands. "I should never have come. I should never have met with him!"

"So no cherubim then?" Snape couldn't resist.

Draco didn't seem to notice. "I can't talk to him, not without coming across like a total arse. He thinks I'm a shallow prat who's just desperate to make a deal with the winning side. And that's what I am, isn't it? Just a broke, scared junior Death Eater on the run -- no prospects, no future. He'll never trust me. Why should he?"

"He said as much?" Snape asked, though he knew better.

"No," Draco groaned and went back to hiding behind his hands. "I tried to kiss him, and he didn't -- he all but took my head off."

Snape shook his head and sat in the facing chair. "Draco Malfoy, you are an ass. A hormonal, stubborn, bad-tempered jackass, to illustrate more clearly. It's a wonder you ever managed to spin off those by-blows your mother was so furious about if you courted all your girlfriends so ham-handedly."

"Girls are different," he glared through his fingers, "any fool can guess what they want to hear, how they want you to act. But Potter's… different. He knows what I was like, I can see it when he looks at me -- like he's just waiting for me to call him a mudblood, or try and hex him or something." He sat up at last, eyes shining and angry. "He's never going to listen to me. He's not going to believe anything I try to tell him about my father, about Voldem-" he stammered, half-swallowed the word. Then he knocked his head against the wing chair's tall back, as though he could somehow make it hurt. "I might as well walk into the Hogsmeade's auror station and hand myself over. Maybe Potter would believe the warning if Weasley told him they dug it out of me under veritaserum before they shipped me off to Azkaban."

Severus cut the diatribe short with a round of sarcastic applause. "Bravo, Malfoy. And shall we have your Hamlet soliloquy next?" Angry colour overspread the young man's face, but Severus gave him no chance to speak. "Do you love him, Malfoy?" he demanded.

Draco went pale, leaned back into the chair once more. "Well. That is, we've only just-"

"Stop hedging and answer," Severus snapped, "If you cannot find it in you to admit it to me, then you deserve no more chance than the aurors will give you!" Draco looked down, mulish and silent. After a moment, Snape shrugged and made as if to stand. "So be it then. I suppose in Azkaban you'll outlive the rest of the Death Eaters, at least."

"I... I don't know, alright?" The young man pleaded, "It's like I can't breathe when I look at him, or when I think he might be looking at me. I'm afraid to move because I'll be clumsy, afraid to speak because I'll be an ass. And then I do go and say something nasty and stupid, and I wreck everything, and it just makes me so angry. How dare he turn me into such a stupid, bumbling hack?" He punched an impotent fist into the chair's padded arm, flinching when the ward-crystals chimed under the force. "But then he turns away, and all I want is to see his face again."

Draco took a deep breath, turned his arm over as if the key to his tangled feelings somehow lay in the warding focus's silver twist. "I've never wanted anyone like this, Professor. I want to take him so hard he screams, I want to own him, bind him, chain him down so I'll always know just where he is -- that he's safe, and no one can hurt him."

Severus, now burdened with exactly the truth he'd asked for, but never really wanted to hear, could only grind his teeth and look down as the young man continued in an awe-stricken voice. "I want... Merlin, I want him to hold _me_, protect me from that thing in my father, from the aurors, from myself. I want him to tell me he doesn't hate me even though he really ought to if he was anything like sane. I want him to teach me what he wants so I'll never ever hurt him. I want to never wonder if he's afraid of me. To know he trusts me." He looked up at last and Severus caught the glitter of tears in his erstwhile student's eyes.

"I'd do anything for that," Draco whispered, "Anything he asked me to. That can't be love though. Love isn't that fucked up, is it sir?"

Snape had to swallow twice before he could manage an answer. "In my experience, Malfoy, Love is precisely that fucked up." He stood, crossed to the bar in the corner to pour a dram of brandy for his nerves. Then he recalled that the day was only half over and he still had four classes left to teach. He took the drink to Malfoy as though he'd intended to all along. "You love him," he said, "Now do what you must to keep him."

Draco made a face at the brandy, which could not have been a comparable vintage to the stuff Lucius kept in _his_ cellars. "How can I keep what I never had?" he asked, "He'll never agree to meet with me again after-"

"After what, your abortive kiss?"

Draco flushed and drank more of the brandy. "I threw soup at him."

"You threw…?"

"Soup." Draco hid his face again. "At him. You're right. I am a jackass."

It was only through a mighty effort of willpower that Snape kept himself from laughing aloud. "Very well then, I shall go and repair your mistake, Jackass. In the meantime, I suggest you put some effort into analyzing your strategy. See if you can't reason out why treating him as if he's the same aggravating boy you knew five years ago might make him less than receptive to your overtures." Stung, Draco sat up, but Snape cut off his protest with an upraised hand. "I suggest you decide how YOU might like to be treated if you stood in his place. Stop grandstanding long enough to listen for his cues, and you will find Harry Potter is quite adept at asking for precisely what he wants."

Finishing the brandy, Draco set the snifter aside. "And what if I can't give that to him?"

_Then another man shall!_ The words were halfway to Severus' lips when he choked them back. He looked down at his left arm, which felt naked without its sheath of silver, crystal and magic. The black sleeve looked so sere, so barren. So bleakly empty.

Severus shook his head. "Then that will only be because you are too much a coward to offer it," he managed at length, "Give him what he deserves; your respect, your attention," _say it, you old fool!_ "Your love." He dusted his spotless robes and turned to the floo canister on his mantle. "Offer him the best of you, or slink back to Spain and make a hollow spot in your body for the master you accepted five years ago."

Draco looked down, ghostly pale against the dark green armchair as he ran a shaking fist over his belly. Then he shook his head and released a ragged sigh. Severus took that for what it was worth and nodded. "Wait here. I'll return soon."

_And it's more than you deserve!_ he did not say, though he had a feeling Draco heard it all the same.

~*~

Severus was surprised to find the floo to Harry's room still open. Draco must have dumped far too much powder in for it to keep burning this long after his passage. He avoided tumbling out by jumping at the last second -- a trick it had taken him years to learn -- and found himself in exactly the surroundings he had expected.

The top room at the Three Broomsticks; bed in the corner, still made neatly, if a little splattered, the remains of a small luncheon set out in the sitting room, though half the table's contents had somehow managed to land on the floor. That would have been the soup incident, Severus supposed.

The sound of an opening door brought him around on his heel, wand in hand, and a spell on his lips. Only the sight which met him shattered any hope Severus had of defense. For there on the threshold stood Harry Potter, wand leveled, squinting through fogged glasses as the steam billowed out around him. But for a towel around his narrow hips, he was naked.

Severus felt his tongue weld to the roof of his mouth. Compact, strong, balance strung light and easy, even under battle-tension. Muscles slid one into another under the milky-brazen steam-dewed skin, a subtle landscape that begged exploration. Water gleamed along the standing ridge of a collarbone, threading its way to trace a coral pink nipple, pebbled from the cold as the wand hand fell. A step. Abdomen muscles shifting, beads of water trailing through the slight scattering of hair that wandered toward his --

"Professor Snape?" Severus dragged his gaze up, fixed it on the boy's face. Potter's black hair curled when wet, forming lyrical ringlets against his throat. They lay along his face like gleaming, rumpled feathers, striping their wetness slyly onto his brow and cheek. Light traced the curving lines down his face to touch the boy's pursed, curious lips with a damp glitter. "Professor? Is everything all right?"

His lungs filled, startled and aching as Severus managed to turn away and face the fireplace. "Potter. Yes." He struggled to banish his body's reaction, but found himself watching the boy's faint reflection in the glass that covered the fireplace painting. "I did not mean to interrupt your bath."

Harry looked down, clearly mistaking Severus' reaction for outraged modesty. "Sorry sir," he shrugged, "It's just my robe's a mess-"

Severus made a rude noise and turned, in command of himself once again. "So I see," he nodded at the splattered blue cloth, which draped across an overturned parlour chair. "Things seem to have gotten rather... exciting in here."

Potter scowled and a furious, fetching blush spread across his face. "It's soup, sir, not-" Snape's lips twitched. Potter saw, and his blush spread all the way down his chest before he turned away with a rude noise and began casting cleaning charms about the room.

And prepared as he was, Severus couldn't help reacting to the clean, soapy smell rising from Harry's body as he flicked his wand about, taking out his irritation on the spilled food, broken crockery and general disarray of his plans. Severus found himself reflecting that Harry Potter most certainly did _not_ smell like an animal.

He was almost caught staring again when Potter finished his sulk and turned. "So why have you come here, Professor?" He asked, "What do you want?"

_To rip that towel off you. To stop that drip of water with my tongue. To unmake that bed. To hear my name on your lips as you come._ Taking a deep breath, he managed not to say any of that. Obedient, his voice curled into its habitual sneer to reply. "Receive Malfoy again. Let him come back here and ... talk to you."

Harry, cold eyed, folded his arms across his chest. "I never told him he had to leave." Another water drop tapped the ridge of his collarbone then wandered brightly down. "Draco was the one who ran."

"And the size of that hole in the plaster rather supports his sense of strategy," Severus nodded at the crushed wall where Harry had put his fist. He didn't know if Harry had chosen to hit the wall over Malfoy, or merely missed his mark, but Severus could understand Malfoy's panicked reaction. Wizard-born children simply did not grow up expecting to get hit.

Harry made a rude noise. "You think Draco was scared of me? After he shoved me into the wall and tried to put his tongue down my throat? Hardly."

Severus shook his head, torn between the desire to throttle Malfoy for his presumption, and the rather desperate urge to do something more or less the same to the half-naked young man before him. "Of course he was scared of you, Potter. That's why he was behaving that way."

"Like he was disgusted to find himself in the same room with me," Harry took up his wand and resumed his cleaning spells, and Severus took full advantage of that opportunity to watch him move about the room. "You were right. He loathes me, just like he always did."

Severus shook his head. "You have no idea how terrifying you are, Potter. You do not know how those eyes can steal words, breath, plans... how the very thought of what may be going on behind them can paralyze like a basilisk's gaze." Harry stopped fussing, listening with one ear turned back over his shoulder and the eyes in question hidden behind his dripping fringe. Severus' hand itched to reveal them. He clenched a fist instead.

"He looks at you and sees something he wants," he went on, trying not to watch as the raven hair dripped glimmering trails down Harry's back, "but he cannot imagine you are something he deserves. He looks at you and he feels a terrified sort of hope -- Do you know how rare that is for a Slytherin, hope?" Severus shook his head, called himself a fool, ordered himself to be silent.

But Harry turned further, raised an eyebrow. "You don't hope, you Slytherins? Not for anything?"

_Dear Merlin._ He coughed, turned to hunt the table for an intact teacup. He found one, but all the saucers were smashed. "We plan, we scheme, we bargain, but hope? No. Too risky, we learn the hard way. But sometimes it cannot be helped and we find ourselves yearning for the something more impossible than, oh, say to fly to the moon. And then to speak of it... to even let you _guess_ the truth puts that rare, fragile thing into your hands." He looked up as Harry poured tea into his cup. "And you have always had so much hope, one cannot help wondering; what if you do not value it? What if you find it a cheap little thing?"

"I don't hold it cheap," Harry said, and pinned by that gaze, Severus did not move his cup in time to avoid the two cubes of sugar the young man dropped in. "Hope's kept me alive too often for that."

Severus jumped at the splash and made a grimace. Perhaps if he drank it quickly...but no, the tea was still cloying, and now his tongue was burned as well. "Malfoy has a lot to lose, Potter," Severus gritted, setting the cup aside, "He's never been this vulnerable before in his life. Perhaps you might consider extending him a bit of understanding instead of meeting force with force?"

Harry paused in the act of pouring his own tea, head to the side, considering. "What happened to you thinking I was making a big mistake here?" he asked, perching on the arm of a chair. "One moment you're calling me a romantic Gryffindor idiot, and the next you're playing matchmaker. What changed your mind?"

"Nothing is changed. I still believe you to be a romantic Gryffindor idiot." Amazing how much comfort a little thing like a smirk could bring to an awkward conversation. But no, the hard part was still to come, wasn't it?

He took a deep breath and ventured the breach. "Remus Lupin was attacked on the Hogsmeade road, in just the way you anticipated. No, sit down, he's unhurt and eating his luncheon in the Great Hall as we speak. I was -- " Severus coughed, "Lupin was not alone when they came for him, so the scenario did not play out precisely as you'd predicted. However, enough of the details were accurate for me to believe it would have done, had he walked home alone that night."

Harry was giving him that look. The one that reminded Severus of Dumbledore, seeing straight through the holes in his story to spot where he'd glossed over the _cruciatus_ torture. Severus could tell the boy was thinking of Saturday morning -- of the powershock he'd healed in the room downstairs. He scowled and filled the silence before Potter could do so. "So I have come to believe that you are dreaming true -- or at least close enough to it that your dreams cannot be ignored. And you spoke of dire consequences to your not reaching an... Understanding with Mr. Malfoy."

Harry nodded and his steady gaze flickered, dropped. Severus didn't need legilimency to guess the young man's thoughts. _And when did you dream my fall then, Potter? Soon, by the look of you._ he mused. Then Harry glanced at him again and those green eyed fixed on his arm, widening as he noticed the un-adorned sleeve for the first time. Severus resisted the urge to hide his arm from sight as Harry went pale.

"Your ward," he breathed, "Draco has your ward? You didn't have another one made for him?" Harry shot to his feet and Severus backed a step, "How could you be so stupid? You know you can't walk around uncovered like that-"

"Between the two of us, Potter, you deserve that description better than I--"

Harry lunged, caught his wrist before he could evade. Severus' breath caught in his throat, ragged and sharp as those strong brown fingers pressed his sleeve against the Dark Mark, but he couldn't pull away. "Potter," he growled, but the threat dried up on his tongue as the man pulled him close -- far too close, and not nearly close enough -- and began to sing again.

As before, Severus could almost feel the words; plosives bursting against his skin like bubbles while growls fluttered by. Sensuous and melodic, the tune wound through his breath, his bones, and his suddenly tight bollocks. Where the healing spell had been all pillowing comfort and softness, this was a bolstering magic, firming him, covering him, as though the Boy Who Lived were curling himself like a thickly armoured cloak over Severus' shoulders. Aroused as he was, with his ears full of velvet and his nose full of Harry's warm, humid skin-scent, it was all Severus could do to keep from thrusting into that rhythmic grip. Dizzy with the sound, Severus opened his eyes, and found himself leaning close to Potter -- close enough to touch his forehead to that pale, scarred brow.

He shied back with a jerk, gave a savage twist to free his wrist. Harry's chant staggered to a close, but the armoured feeling did not dissipate. "I'll thank you to keep your pagan nonsense to yourself, Potter." Snape grumbled, twitchy under the unfamiliar magic. He could feel the blood standing hot across his face as he glowered.

Harry only shrugged. "It's out of my hands now, professor. That spirit shield won't release until it's either broken, or you get your device back from Malfoy," he said without any trace of apology.

Severus took a deep breath and inconspicuously adjusted his robes to hang in a more concealing manner. _The boy is aggravating. Disrespectful. Arrogant. Remember this, Severus!_ "You really must leave that forest soon, Potter," he scowled, "before you forget all trace of Human magic and manners!"

Harry flashed a grin just cheeky enough to settle Snape's nerves back into their familiar irritability. "Perhaps, but the centaurs are teaching me far more valuable things."

"Such as?" He flicked his wand and sent the shards of plaster drifting back upward to seal the hole Harry's fist had left in the wall. It was better than meeting that gravid stare.

"That you help your friends when you know they need it," Harry said after a moment, "even if they don't think they do." He took up his newly cleaned robes and gave them a shake.

Snape tried not to be disappointed when Harry draped the heavy fabric about himself and twitched the towel out from underneath. "And you know I need it?"

Harry nodded without looking up from his buttons. Snape looked at his own left wrist where it pulled out of his long sleeve. He could just see the pale-imprint Harry's hand had left over the Dark Mark; still distinct, still tingling with magic. He remembered Harry's dreams and decided to ask no further. He looked up to find Harry gazing at him, waiting for some sort of reaction, and only then realized that Harry had once again called him friend.

_No reason that should hurt, you foolish old man._ he scolded himself as he turned away from those expectant eyes. "I am leaving," he coughed, "I shall send Malfoy back. Do, please, try and remember not to be such an insufferable Gryffindor, won't you?"

~*~

"Er. Professor Sna-?"

"Get out," he snarled without looking.

Markos, a seventh-year Ravenclaw, coughed and dithered. "It's just that-"

"What? It's too late? It's too early? You're too bloody stupid to grasp the freedom you so clearly crave when it's offered to you?" He swept the room with a glare so hot it made the wretched, milk-faced sops cringe. Unsatisfying though; none of them burst into tears. "Well, your intellectual dysfunction fails to interest me! I am thoroughly tired of your presence." They stared, a few mouths dropping open. "That means I want you all to LEAVE!" He bellowed.

"But -- our essays?" Markos squeaked as his classmates rustled into action.

Snape curled his lip and showed his teeth. "Seeing as how I have no intention whatsoever of looking at the damned things, let alone grading them, I could not possibly care less what you do with your essays, just so long as you GET THEM AND YOURSELVES OUT OF MY CLASSROOM AT ONCE, YOU INSIPID RAVENCLAW TWITS!"

Only after the flock had fled did Severus allow himself to relax into the aching, bone-deep shiver he had been resisting. A groan caught in the back of his throat and he had to fight the urge to writhe under hands that were not touching him at all. _Damn that ward focus, damn Potter's wretched spirit shield,_ Severus thought, struggling to breathe, _Damn me for a fool, cruciatus would be kinder than this!_

His chair creaked as he pressed back into it, besieged and overwhelmed by the distant seduction, unable to either respond or ignore the sensual flood. It was not images now, but sensations like ghost-touches on his body, not words, but sultry tones that stirred his blood from afar. And the emotion was the worst -- waves of it swelled and broke over his head -- wonder, astonished delight, passion and seething, hungry desire piercing him to the heart over and over.

Severus knew the taste of love now; it was like blood from a tongue bitten still once too often. Like cold, dusty air sucked deeply and silently over a throat that longed for sweaty, musky dampness. He had been achingly hard for hours, and pinned between the phantom sensations and the curious stares of his students. He had managed to keep from clutching himself in front of the damnable creatures, but had long since given up on any lesson plans which might require him to move from the shelter of his massive oaken desk. A maddening compromise, to say the least, but that class had been the last of the day. From them, at least, he was finally free.

Severus dropped a hand to his lap -- the right, since his left still clutched his wand -- and gripped his cock firmly through his trousers. The answering throb was both relieved and desperate, and he knew he would not last long, even under his own dry hand. "Steady on, Severus," he said aloud, chagrined to hear his voice snag, "Not in the classroom."

Because he would _not_ be walked in on by some forgetful, nosy student, damn it -- this situation was humiliating enough already! He ground the heel of his hand down, gasping and shuddering as pain, clean, bright, and _his_ cut through the wet swipes of a tongue that was not there (though Merlin, did he wish it were!) It centered him, as pain always did, gave him just enough traction to shake off his daze and make the walk down the hall to his own private chambers.

Trailing clothes behind him, Severus made his way to his bedchamber, cursing buttons all the way. His patience failed by the time he reached the bed, so he simply flung the tails of his coat and shirt out of his way as he collapsed into his bed. "Damn you, Potter," he gasped, taking hold of himself at last, "Damn Malfoy, and damn Vol-" he gasped, arched under another onslaught of sensation, insides clenching in eager confusion, "-demort, and damn me for not --" he threw back his head, drew a shuddering breath as his cock wept a long, thready tear over his knuckles, "dear Merlin save me, not having the sense to go on hating... you... HARRY!" And he was coming hard, thrusting, arching off the bed as though gripped by a blissful _cruciatus_. His cock pulsed hotly in his frantic grip, thundering echoes of pleasure raced from his brain to his toes and back.

When his breath resumed, and his heart once more found its pace, Severus realized that the bleed-over from the distant lovers had retreated somewhat. It was still there, but it was a background noise now; faint, almost abstract whispers on the edge of hearing. Imminently ignorable, Merlin be praised. He had just time enough to breathe a long, relieved sigh at his unexpected reprieve -- just long enough to cast a cleaning spell and to begin to think of summoning a castle elf with his dinner.

Then his wand gave a warning creak.

"Bloody hell!" Severus snatched the willow rod up again and found it almost hot under his fingers. "Not now, not bloody now!" But no, he realized with only a moment's concentration, it _was_ happening. The Dark Mark was besieged, and the ward focus was doing its job, channeling the force to his wand. He had to prepare a ground for it soon, or risk his wand shattering under the pressure.

With another curse, Severus leapt from his bed and strode into his workroom, where his favorite silver cauldron waited for him. He prowled the shelves, plucking down ingredients for a dreamless sleep draught from memory and listening with worry to his wand's plaintive creaks and groans. _Merlin, it's never taken this much pressure!_ he scowled, summoning it to hand. It launched itself into his palm with a crack and sizzle, almost as desperate as he had been just moments before.

"Easy," he murmured, and waved it at the firebed beneath the cauldron. Flame exploded with a roar, blasting his cauldron wide open. With a stricken clang it crashed into the wall like a cannonball. Shards of silver, wood and stone flew wildly in the flickering glare as Severus frantically waved the spell away. Belling silence followed, smoke-wreathed and cut with his ragged breath. _What in Merlin's name?_ Severus wondered, then the wand gave another low moan, and he understood.

"It will take more than a potion to settle you, won't it?" He murmured to the wand as he cast a barrage of spells around the room. Deosil magic, all -- cleaning soot, repairing stone and silver, strengthening mortar in the ancient walls, rebuilding warding spells that had been part of that ancient earth before even the castle stones had been quarried. She sighed with relief, but the burn in Severus' hand warned him against complacency; the attack on Draco's mark was not over. So Severus strengthened, straightened and repaired everything he could find in his workroom, then moved on to his quarters.

In minutes, not even the pages of his treasured books were crumbling anymore. And still his wand sang, and still the ghostly echoes of oblivious passion whispered down the back of Severus' neck. "Hmph. Trust Malfoy to overlook a Possession in favor of a blowjob," he murmured, pausing to mop his brow, "But at least the ward is holding. I've only to keep on grounding, and hope the bastard exhausts himself-"

_"What's this then?"_ That voice -- warm and sticky and horribly familiar down the back of his neck. Severus shocked cobra still, unbreathing, unblinking as his Mark flared to life like an ember beneath his skin. Silkily pleased and not fooled in the least, Lucius Malfoy purred on. _"Wandplay all alone in the dungeons? That couldn't be little Severus now, could it?"_

"Shite."

_"It IS,"_ Lucius crowed, his voice an echo through Severus' bones, belling in his skull, humming in his clenched teeth. "Why I hardly dared hope you'd have the sense to accept my invitation, let alone think to see you back in the web so soon! What's the matter then, Severus? Are you bored with your 'hero's reward' already?"

Severus' wand was ticking again, begging release even as it shrank from the radiant evil of his awakening Mark. "Oh, terribly. My Order of Merlin does chafe so," he replied with a snarl, summoning his over robe. The garment flapped around his head like a giant bat until he snagged it from the air.

_"Well you'll have to bring it along with you then,"_ Lucius' voice lost a bit of its smug, and Severus' Mark reflected the displeasure with a vicious twist. _"I'm certain Our Lord can melt it down into something far more useful."_

Snape shrugged his robe on and flung the door wide. No time to trouble with trousers or shoes now -- not with his wand spitting sparks and his arm about to burst into flame. "Lovely," Severus slashed magic at the castle's foundation stones -- a stabilizing spell half remembered through the haze of pain. "A shiny new bit and bridle for you, perhaps?" The walls groaned, shifted, then settled again, mortar smooth and shining hard. Severus could hear the magic shoving its way upward floor by floor, shifting time-settled timbers, grinding quoins and ashlars against each other like stones in a stream. "Disappointing, isn't it, Malfoy," he panted, "to find that your ultimate potential was realized as a saddle-beast for an undead revenant?"

_"As opposed to a traitor, Severus?"_ Lucius returned coldly.

"A Traitor is merely a Patriot who lost the war," Severus turned his grimace of pain into a smirk, "Which makes _you_ the traitor between us, Malfoy."

_"You speak as though the war were over,"_ Lucius' purr was back, and with a shudder, the Mark went conspicuously still. His neck prickled. _"But never fear, my dear turncoat -- we value you far too much to let you wander ungoverned. We shall see that you stand with the winning side come the real endgame._

Then he felt it. Like a blade cracking his ribs wide beneath his right shoulder, like a brutal fist plunging into him, shoving the breath from his body in a shocked wheeze. Severus staggered, shouldered into the wall.

""Sssseverussss." His wand gave a horrified twist, at the mosquito whine in his ear, "Return to me, my broken blade. I will reforge you-"

The words faded to static, drowned in nonsense words sung low and sweet in a tenor as soft as velvet. Severus breathed a ragged sigh as the pressure scattered, the pain evaporated like smoke, and Harry's shielding spell wrapped him tightly around. Stay, the spell whispered to him in Harry's voice, don't leave me, don't let me go.

_Never,_ he promised himself grimly, then aloud, in case his tormentors were still close enough to hear, he sneered. "You are no Wealand, Tom Riddle, I am no Albion, and you, Malfoy, are no kind of Merlin. Keep your parasite to yourself, or share him about your own incestuous tribe if you choose. I have no use for his like."

He caught the distant echo of rage, and fired off a spiteful _protego_ in its direction. His Mark replied with a savage ripple, but Severus's breath escaped as a chuckle nonetheless. "And two fingers back to you, gentlemen."

"Professor Snape!" The Headmistress clattered down the stairs, robes flying as she ran. "What in the world is going on?"

"Th' castle elves're in a fit!" Hagrid added, taking the steps three at a go. Lupin darted around him, cane rattling against the steps.

"The wards are going mad, Severus! Dark magic of the worst sort, and all focused on-"

"Me," he wheezed, cradling his arm tight against his breast. "Thank you for-" he gasped, then forced himself to straighten, "your concern. But I have this in hand."

"That is not funny, Severus!" Minerva scowled, then her eyes widened. "Where on earth is your ward focus?"

Lupin surged forward, his eyes wolf-bright and his wand in hand. "It's them, isn't it? It's Vol-"

"Of course it is," he snapped, thrusting his own wand, handle forward at the startled Defense teacher, "now curse me."

Lupin flinched. "What?"

"Curse my Mark, you fool, overload the conduit of attack!" Severus tore at his sleeve, revealed the coil of black magic, blistering against shaking crimson flesh, "My Mark feeds my ward, my ward feeds my wand, my wand feeds the spell, the spell attacks my Mark," he shuddered gratefully as Lupin's eyes glittered understanding.

"A feedback loop! Of course!" Lupin snatched the wand. "If I can cast a strong enough echo back up the spell-stream, it could disrupt-"

Minerva grabbed the werewolf's elbow. "Wait! The risk-"

"I must keep Them engaged," Severus managed, shaking his head as that strange, strengthening chant wove around him once again -- Harry's wild magic bolstering, cushioning him, comforting against the shaking agony. "Cast anything, you idiotic Gryffindors! _Somnus_ if you're squeamish, but cast damn you!"

Lupin nodded, pulled Severus' arm out flat. "How long?"

Severus bit his tongue as the willow tapped his coal-black, blistering Mark, the softest of touches shaking him like a lightning strike. "Until it fades," he managed.

"Right," Lupin nodded grimly, "Hagrid, catch him."

Severus had just enough time to wonder, as the sleep hex swirled up through his brain, whether he would dream of Voldemort and the perversion his Death Eaters had become, or if the darkness would be full of bronze and cream skin, of soft, urgent hands and lips that hungered endlessly, but not for him.

_Equal torment either way._ he supposed as the darkness whelmed him under.

~*~

"A research paper?" Remus Lupin stopped mid-stride in the hallway, the morning sun picking out silver in his hair, and slate under his eyes as he turned to stare at the Headmistress.

Who merely gave him a tight-lipped smile and stepped around him to continue on her way. "Ready for publication by the winter holidays, thank you," She glared between her Defense master and her Potions master, unable to decide which of the two infuriated her the more. "You have both been at pains to tell me that the theory behind last night's appalling display of bravado was sound, and that contrary to my understanding of the dangers of spirit combat, Severus was in no danger of finishing out the evening either dead or mad." she gave the scowling man a hard glare by way of expressing her opinion on that outcome, "So consider this your chance to prove to me that you were NOT simply being reckless with my staff and students."

"I don't believe it!" Lupin managed to laugh, "We pull off the magical coup of the year, we actually manage to disrupt a Death Eater summoning, and choke the summoner with no more than a little sleep spell, and you're assigning us punishment homework!"

Severus barked a defiant crow's laugh. "What is the alternative, pray? To write a hundred times each "I must not unexpectedly survive spectral attacks when it would inconvenience the Headmistress?"

"Don't push your luck, Professor!" Minerva replied, setting off down the hallway again, "Or you will both find yourself writing lines as well! Regardless of the motivation or circumstances, you were both inexcusably reckless last night. You, Severus, for wandering about without your warding focus, and you, Remus, for your complicity in risking his life with a spell whose result you did not actually know! What if that feedback loop had trapped you both in a closed circuit? What if it had consumed his mind, or your magic -- or both? I require more accountability from my Professors than Albus Dumbledore did," she paused at the gargoyle to let the men catch up to her. "If you two hadn't realized that by now, it's high time you did so."

"But I'd meant to go to Santorini this summer," Lupin muttered as she gave the password and stepped onto the rising staircase.

Minerva bit back a smile at Snape's reply. "Not unless it's for their library, werewolf -- I'll not be stuck doing the work whilst you're getting a bloody tan!"

She left them to snarl at each other on the lower landing, and went on up to join the meeting. She supposed the summer would see many an argument between the two professors over her wee project, but Minerva did not regret her decision. Amorphous theories were all well and good for accomplished duelists and brilliant academicians, but what those two had managed last night was far beyond theory -- it was unheard of! Using the Dark Mark against the other Death Eaters -- even against Voldemort himself, or such as was left of him! Why the implications were enormous, and Minerva was no Albus to keep such strategy to herself and her chosen few. She had seen too many heroes die that way. She wanted the facts laid out in plain, sensible lines, thank you very much, where all those who needed to know them could learn!

Minerva strode into her office, then stopped in surprise to find Alastor Moody sitting behind her desk and grinning. "Heard you spitting and yowling half the castle away, Minnie old moggy," he moved his boot and peg from her desktop when she scowled at him, but his wild grin did not fade one whit. "Thought I'd come out here and wait for you. See if I couldn't settle that ridge down before you went in and tore strips."

"Don't you flirt with me, Alastor Moody!" Minerva huffed, deftly sidestepping his pinch, "I see through you without needing a magical eye! The rest are all here, I suppose?"

"Aye, save for you, young Harry, and your two wee lost lambs. Hagrid's just finished telling us what happened last night."

"Lambs, is it!"

"One in a wolf's skin, t'other black as sin and just as irredeemable," he said, relinquishing her chair at last, "It's true then, is it? They turned the Mark back around on Himself? Hit him through his own back door?" Minerva pursed her lips, and that was all the reply Moody seemed to need. He gave a whoop and slapped his knee. "Hah! Well I suppose there's a use for Albus' pet Death Eater after all!"

"What, you mean aside from intelligence gathering, combat magic, and battlefield medic skills that kept _you_ from losing your other leg five years ago?" Minerva sniped.

"Aye, aside from that." His eye swiveled wildly, glinting in the morning light. "And they can do it again? T'wasn't some once-off we'll never repeat? Imagine! Sorting the lot of those Death Eating bastards all at one go!"

"Well, I wouldn't go that far, Alastor," Lupin put in as he entered the office, "it's all theory just yet-"

"_Proven_ theory, Lupin," Severus contradicted, "as of this morning when I awakened with my magic intact."

"Then that's good enough for me!" Moody crowed.

"Enough. You two are wanted in the meeting," she pointed imperiously at the tall, warded doors behind the desk, "and YOU," Minerva swatted the auror's behind with her wand and he gave a startled hop "Don't encourage them!"

~*~

"We've finished our negotiations with the Italian Bounty Guild's representatives," Arthur Weasley said when it was his turn to report, "They claim that they'd been told their target was a criminal, and were never given a name to go by, so they had no idea they were hunting a War Hero. I know, I know," he held up his hands to still the outcry. "But we had little real choice overall -- they were going back to Italy sooner or later."

"My vote's for later," Tonks put in with a scowl, her face still hex-singed from the capture, "Much later, and in pieces if possible!"

"In exchange for amnesty from prosecution, the Guild has not only canceled the contract on Remus, but they have cancelled the eighteen other contracts purchased by that client at the time." Arthur went on, grimly pleased at the stunned silence. "They have also turned over all of their documentation, and the agent who accepted the contracts has proved to have an excellent memory."

"Eighteen other contracts, and all on British subjects?" Kingsley Shacklebolt shook his head in wonder, "Arthur, who-"

"Well us, mostly," the Assistant Minister shrugged. "You, that is. They had a contract that might have been for me, but the details were sketchy enough that it could have been my boy Percy."

"For whom you would, no doubt, have turned yourself over to ransom." Snape observed dryly from the corner. "Most likely they'll have had similar contingencies in mind for all of you whose lives are too high-profile for quiet disappearances or accidental deaths. Or else they'll have gone with less reputable bounty hunters for that, folk who aren't so concerned with issues of legality or ethics." he shrugged at the ring of shocked faces, "It's what I would do in Malfoy's place -- paid assassins are easier to come by than loyal Death Eaters these days."

"Yes, and we're _happy_ about that shortage of Death Eaters, remember?" frowned Minerva. Snape replied with an amused snort.

"Well anyway," Arthur went on, "we at the Ministry feel Snape's more or less right. The Death Eaters are trying to destabilize us; take out the Order and the Ministry upper levels, and then move in while things are still unsettled."

"But why?" Diggle asked, "We beat the tar out of them last time! Harry and Albus killed You-Know-Who, and they went running like rabbits. Those who did survive have to know they were pure lucky, so what can they be after coming back?"

"Harry," no less than four voices answered the question.

Diggle shook his head in wonder. "Again, this obsession? But it doesn't make sense to kill all of us just to try and get to-"

"Idiot," Snape cut him off, "It is the only plan that makes sense! Voldemort doesn't want the Boy-Who-Lived; he wants a new body with which to rebuild his 'empire' -- a powerful body which already shares a conduit to his own magic. He wants Potter despairing and alone, without hope of rescue or comfort as he is broken to the Dark Lord's saddle!" He stood, glowering into the shocked silence that met him, "And he could do it -- he could invade Potter, given the time to work without interruption. Why else do you imagine Potter went into hiding earlier this spring? He knew his enemy was hunting him, and I think he knew what for as well. The only obstacle between Voldemort and Harry Potter is gathered here in this room."

They looked at each other, but no one was ready to contradict the Potions Master's assertion. After a moment, Snape stood up straight, folding his arms over his chest and peering down his nose. "I believe we all know what it is we must do. The only way we can beat this campaign of assassination is to carry it to our foes."

"But surely Severus," Arthur shook his head, "surely you don't mean that-"

"Voldemort, or what is left of him, transports himself from Mark to Mark," Snape shouted over him, "It is how he continues on in his shadow-life, and it is how he will evade us forever, picking us and our lily white, ethical hands off from a distance while we never come near him. Unless we turn Hunters ourselves, Harry Potter will become the next Dark Lord, and we will none of us live to see it!"

"We don't to things that way, Snape," Shacklebolt said, his eyes narrowed.

"High time we did, say I." Moody put in, rising from his chair, "I've been fighting this war over and over again all my life, and I'm tired of it! By Merlin, if it takes a bit of ugliness to make it stop once and for all, why I'm not too fancy for that!"

"Dead on!" Tonks agreed, thumping her fist on the table top.

Lupin nodded grimly. "I'll do whatever it takes to keep that thing away from Harry. Even murder."

"Execution," corrected Emmeline Vance with a sniff, "seeing as how every Death Eater but Severus has already been tried and sentenced in absentia anyway."

"We don't even know how many are left," Shacklebolt protested, "let alone where to find them!"

Severus merely showed his teeth in what might have been a smile, had it held the least trace of humour. "I have the means to trace them," he said, holding up his left arm so the un-buttoned sleeve of his robe fell back to reveal his fiercely reddened skin. The Mark stood out, sere and stark white against it. "And I have likewise the means to defeat them," he said.

Minerva made a rude noise. "That's it! One thousand lines, Severus: 'I must not pretend to be ten feet tall and utterly spell-proof!'"

"Here though, she's right Severus," Arthur put in, "That makes you our only access to them, and surely they'll catch on to that pretty fast. What happens to the plan should we lose you?"

Then the door opened, revealing Draco Malfoy on the threshold, with the portkey medallion to the Headmistress' office in one hand, Snape's glittering ward focus on the other arm, and Harry's snowy owl perched on his shoulder. "If Professor Snape falls," he said bright eyed, angelically blonde, and pretending not to see the wands appearing in every hand, "Then you'll have me there to take his place!"

~*~

"PIPE DOWN, THA LOT A YOU!" Hagrid's bellow quelled the ensuing bedlam, "An' t'isn't polite ta be pointin wands at yer allies anyhow, specially without lettin' em say but a word, so let young Mr. Malfoy give accountin' fr' imself!"

"Hagrid, there's a price on his head!" Lupin growled, "And a sentence in Azkaban with his name on it for High Treason! We can't possibly trust him!"

And again, Hagrid had to shout down the response, interposing himself between Draco and the rest of the order by way of making his point. "Well I know we trust our own, don' I? Perfessor Snape saw fit to loan his widget to 'im, and he's come with Our Harry's own Order of Merlin portkey, hasn't he?"

"Which only says he knows how to steal," Shacklebolt growled, "Hagrid, move, damn it!"

"Kingsley, sit down before you make an even bigger ass of yourself," Snape sneered, now the only person seated in the room, "I gave Malfoy the use of my ward focus last night because Potter asked specifically to see him." Minerva growled low in her throat, but the Potion's Master didn't spare her a glance.

"Answer me this, Mr. Malfoy," said the Headmistress in a voice which could have shattered ice, "Just how did you come by Mr. Potter's owl?"

And peering under Hagrid's brawny arm, Malfoy gave her a look as if she'd grown a second head. "Potter put her on my shoulder and told her to stay there, of course. How else do you think she'd get there?"

"Can owls be _imperio_'d?" Tonks wondered aloud.

"No, ye silly girl, they cannae!" Hagrid replied, "and Hedwig wouldnae be half so cozy if young Malfoy meant her man harm, since animals have better sense than some folk I could mention without harf thinkin' about it!"

"Er, he did send a note, you know." Draco ventured from his shelter just enough to point at the owl's leg, where a scrap of parchment was tied with a green thread.

"I'll have that!" Moody growled, clumping forward with his eye awhirl. Draco flinched, paled a bit, but managed to stand still while the old auror retrieved the parchment and read. "Hmph. No spells on't. Handwriting look's right, though one of his teachers could tell better."

"Presupposing Potter turned any written work in for _their_ classes, of course," Severus grumbled.

"Called away on emergency' he says," the auror went on, "I've sent Draco on to explain what happened. Please believe he is on our side, because he has information the Order needs. Sincerely, Harry Potter." He looked up, grizzled and grim as he examined the pale youth trying not to tremble before him. "Well then, which is it to be, lad?"

"Which?"

"Veritaserum, or Legilimency?"

Draco glared, but then Hedwig cooed and nuzzled into his hair, and he forced a smile. "Whichever you want, sir. You do whatever it takes to satisfy your paranoia, but I _AM_ going to be a part of this plan! You need me too much to turn me away."

"And why is that, Mr. Malfoy?" Arthur Weasley asked, making a conspicuous show of setting his wand on the table.

"Because I know their names. I know where they live, where they own property, where they keep their money," Draco replied, "With my help, it can be over in a month -- Voldemort gone for good, and all you white knights tilt off into the sunset," Draco spread his hands into a shrug, "But if you turn me away and try to dowse them out with nothing but Snape's Mark, you'll be chasing Death Eaters around the world for years to come. Europe, South America, Asia," he shook his head, confidence returning as he watched the aurors and bureaucrats in the room grasp his meaning. "I doubt the Ministry could afford that kind of publicity, either at home, or in the Foreign Office, could it?"

"And the longer this drags out," Snape observed darkly, "the more likely it will be that someone will find a way to reach Ha- Potter."

Moody gave the Potions Master a hard look, but finally turned and resumed his seat at the table. "That's right," he said, laying both hands on the table, "It will have to be quick, or not at all."

"I'm sorry, Alastor, Severus," Arthur shook his head and waved Tonks, Vance and Kingsley to stand down as he took his seat, "I can't allow Ministry personnel to be involved in assassinations. Death Eaters in Britain are one thing, but if any aurors should be seen, or Merlin forbid, captured out of Ministry jurisdiction it would start an international incident. And if murder was involved it could easily escalate into war."

"Bollocks." Tonks grumbled, flopping into her chair as across from her, Kingsley nodded agreement, looking relieved.

"Eh," Moody shrugged, unfixing his auror's badge and spinning it across the table to the Assistant Minister, "Suits me -- there's less paperwork this way anyhow."

Vance removed her badge as well. Diggle gave her a look, then moved to sit closer to Shacklebolt.

For a moment there was silence, then Draco coughed delicately and produced a shrunken file folder out of his sleeve. "Even if you're not going to fight, Wea -- er, Mr. Weasley, I think at least the Ministry ought to have access to this information." He slid the file across the table, and it came to rest between the two discarded auror's badges. "That's a copy of the properties, assets, habits and aliases of all the Death Eaters still alive... Barring myself and Professor Snape, of course."

Enlarging the file, Arthur flipped briefly through. "This is very complete, Mr. Malfoy," he acknowledged.

Draco shrugged. "Been planning this for awhile. Thought I'd better be as useful as I could be if I stood a hope of not being cursed on sight."

"Mm. And I assume you have the same sort of records for all the rest as well?"

"That _is_ the rest," Draco said, "Sixteen left alive -- no wait, fifteen. You can cross Rookwood off the list." Snape returned the younger man's grin with a pleased scowl.

"Well," Arthur smiled, tucking the file into his attaché, "I suppose I can ask Percy to check these against what we already know about these characters. That sort of Ministry resource isn't hard to overlook or explain away."

"That's as may be, Arthur," Minerva said, "however what I cannot overlook or explain away is that in order for this... this..._plan_ to succeed, both Draco Malfoy and Severus Snape shall have to die alongside the rest!"

All noise in the room ceased. No paper rustled, no chair creaked. Snape looked at Draco, who looked back as steadily, making it plain to everyone that both had thought of this, but rather hoped the subject would not come up.

"I don't expect I'm likely to survive much longer one way or the other," Draco said at last, "Betraying my father put a definite limit on my life expectancy, you know? At least you lot will make it clean and quick when the time comes."

"And I, against every expectation, have lived through Voldemort's rise twice already," Snape added from his dark corner, "there are worse ways to spend one's death than in stopping a third such rebirth. There are some who would say I am living on borrowed time already."

"Hmph! Two of the _least_ likely sacrificial lambs I've ever seen!" said Professor Vector, smirking proudly from the still-open door. Her grin widened as all eyes turned to her in varying shades of outrage, and she held up a fragile, spidery twist of silver and metal. "This'll be yours, young Mr. Malfoy, if I've overheard correctly," she tossed the focus to the youth, who plucked it like a snitch from the air. "Seeing as how Severus neglected to tell us for whom we were making this focus, we couldn't key it to your wand," she said, taking the last empty seat at the table, "Quite a pickle, that, and I don't mind saying. That's why it took Filius and I so long to make this one, but finally his Brigit thought of the answer, and Bob's your uncle!"

"And that answer would be?" Snape prompted icily, replacing his own, familiar ward focus over his sleeve.

"Why, to key the ward to dump its energy into the iron lode under Hogwarts' bedrock, where the ancient Castle Wards are based," she beamed in just the way one would when they'd been asked the very question they'd hoped to have a chance to answer, "From there, the raw magic filters up through the stone to become part of Hogwarts defensive wards. Any power attacking that," she pointed at the device which Draco was carefully fitting over his cuffs, "will only make us here stronger. We rather liked the idea of You-Know-Who ending his existence as part of the protections for the one place he never could conquer."

"But surely it couldn't be strong enough to ground Voldemort's life energy," Lupin exclaimed, though his eyes lit with a golden, eager hope.

Vector nodded. "I'm as certain as I can be without actually sending a spirit through it."

"Well, that's more chance than I hoped for before you walked in that door, Professor Vector," Draco said, " so for my part, I thank you."

"So that's it then," Minerva stood, hands on her hips as she surveyed the Order of the Phoenix with sharp grey eyes, "You're resolved to go through with this?" Their faces were answer enough; determination, certainty, reasonable fear in more than a few, unreasonable eagerness in others; veterans all, she realized, weathering the hope of winning all in one final, mighty push.

_Oh, Albus,_ she thought as she spread her hands in a gesture of defeat, _How on earth did you ever manage this bloody business?_ But the Headmaster's portrait was still and silent, and no twinkling ghost appeared to whisper the answers in her ear.

"Then may the Pendragon's luck go with you," she said, and strode from the secret room in crisp, measured steps.

~*~

The door opened behind him and Harry, comfortably ensconced before the fire on the left side of the sofa, did not turn. "I'm afraid I got started without you Severus," he said as the footfalls drew crisply near, "You're rather late." Feeling the shadow of the Potions Master overtake his seat, Harry craned his head backward.

"And you, Mr. Potter, are rather drunk," Snape said, the long summer twilight softening the lines of his upside down smirk.

"Getting there," Harry agreed. "Join me?"

The eyebrow rose, threatening sarcasm, but Harry didn't flinch. He'd met Severus Snape many times for news and gossip in the past two weeks, and he'd come to a certain amount of understanding regarding which of the man's expressions were serious and which were mainly for show. "Join you?" Severus replied, "Well, you do rather appear to be falling apart, so why not? What are we drinking then?"

"Not that," Harry squinted, pointing at the bottle on the mantelpiece, "that one's empty. We're drinking this now," he held up the bottle, which had been resting, in his lap.

"And 'this' is?"

Harry squinted at the flames through the liquor. "Green," he pronounced it.

Severus gave one of his rare crow-like laughs, and plucked a tumbler from the table. "Very well, Mr. Potter, pour me some of your 'Green'."

Harry poured. "That's a new burn on your sleeve, isn't it. Did someone blow up your classroom again?"

Severus tasted the Green and made a sour face, but kept his glass as he sat on the other end of the sofa. "It always happens on the last day of Term," he shrugged, "Sort of a 'we're pissing off for the summer so you can't give us detention' gift from my devoted students."

"Remember us fondly while you're rebuilding your lab," Harry snickered, then shook his head. "Sounds about right." He took a drink, then shot Snape an apprehensive glance. "Of course I never-"

"With the way I watched you, Potter, don't you think I'd have caught you at it if you had done?" Severus smirked.

Which, of course, was true. Harry took a drink and allowed the silence to settle for a moment. The liquor was a strange combination of fire and sweet and back-of-the-tongue bitterness that suited his mood exactly on this particular evening. "So," he heard the liquor saying, "End of term. You'll be leaving then." _Draco will be leaving... and I won't get to say-_

"Tomorrow night, yes," Snape said, "Lupin and I will be the last to go. I'm afraid your news service is about to expire, Mr. Potter."

"Well," Harry swallowed hard, "don't think I'm not grateful for it, Professor. I'd have run mad this past two weeks without you to tell me what's going on. With Draco just disappearing, and my having no way to contact him, with the dreams I keep having, and with everyone else being so cagey... I mean I understand why they don't want me to know what they're doing, I suppose, but-"

"But you are at your most destructive when people try to protect you," Severus agreed. "When informed of the particulars, you actually show some elements of self preservation and sense -- sometimes even manage to follow instructions," Harry snorted, Severus ignored him, "but when you know there's something you aren't being told, there is no foolish error you won't commit to find out what that is."

Harry blinked. "I just don't like secrets, I suppose."

Snape raised his glass in an ironic toast, "Except, of course, in the finding out of them, which happens to be your particular addiction. To which end, I have news about Draco for you."

Harry sat up straight, weathering a smirk from Snape for it, but unable to care. "Is Mr. Weasley going to let him go now? Will they let him come say goodbye?" Snape's face did that odd little freeze, like a door slamming shut somewhere in the back of his mind, and that was answer in plenty. "Damn it," Harry emptied his glass in a fiercely disappointed gulp, "Sorry, go on."

"The Ministry has reached an agreement with Malfoy's solicitors," Snape said, "Since he was not implicated by name or directly identified in any Unforgivable crime, they are waiving the automatic sentence for his being a Death Eater." Harry closed his eyes as a profound sense of relief washed over him. "They will not, however, release any of the Malfoy estates or finances, seeing as how Lucius remains at large." Snape's heavy pause did away with Harry's smile, "Nor, it seems, will they rescind Draco's banishment. He was turned over to the custody of retired auror Alastor Moody for his deportation at nine this morning. By now they are most likely established in the Order's headquarters in Calais."

_He's already gone. They took him away without..._ Harry took a deep, shaking breath. "They'll review that decision after this operation is over," he said, as much to himself as to Snape, "They'll let him come back if he proves himself."

"Assuming he survives, yes." There was something shadowy and hesitant in Snape's reply, but Harry didn't think it sounded like a lie, so he let it pass. "He might win his redemption through this, but then the Ministry is capricious and often corrupt, even with Weasley at the Minister's right hand. It would not do to fix your hopes on fairness from that quarter, Potter."

And what could Harry say to that truth? "He can't die. He has to come back," he murmured to the fire, knowing it was stupid and that Snape would probably laugh at him, "You can't let him face Lucius, Professor, whatever else happens, you have to keep him from that-"

Snape made an annoyed sound, leaning across to pluck the bottle from Harry's nerveless fingers. "Yes, your dreams again, I know." He refilled both their glasses with a precise flourish, "I will do what I can, Potter, but you know the chaos of war as well as I. On the battlefield-"

"It wasn't a battlefield," Harry insisted, "it's him alone, facing his father in a duel, though he doesn't even have a second there with him," the dream images swirled up in Harry's memory, tinted Green and flickering with firelight, "It's dawn, heavy mist, so there's a river nearby. I can hear crows in the trees, and-"

"If I can, Potter," Snape cut him off.

"I know." Harry sat back with a sigh. "Thank you. It's just I hate this, you know? I should be going with you! I should be able to BE there, facing Voldemort myself, not hiding here in England while all the people I love are risking their lives!"

"Potter, don't be-"

"I know," he struggled out of the sofa, too frustrated to sit still anymore, "Don't you think I know? My dreams, your bloody logic -- even Firenze's forbidden me to go farther than Hogsmeade! Threatened to come after me and bring me back himself if I tried."

"Good," Snape's eyes were fierce, "Because I'd drug you insensible myself, to make you easier for him to carry!"

"Look, I-" Harry's reply was cut short by a tapping at the window. He whirled, caught his stagger on the back of a chair. "That's not Hedwig," he said of the dark shape on the owl roost outside the Three Broomsticks' top-room window.

"Then it's probably _not_ for you," Snape brushed past him to let the dark-winged Ministry Owl in, smirking when it hopped onto the windowsill and extended its foot to him. "As expected, Potter, now why don't you sit before you fall?"

Harry thought about that, measured the steps back to the sofa, which seemed farther now that he hadn't the momentum of pacing to drive him. Then it occurred to him just who might have been owling Snape the day before he would leave England. A suspicious glance at the Potions Master's letter -- and the second sealed fold of parchment inside it -- supported Harry's decision to go nowhere. _It's not from Draco. It's probably a fellow researcher asking for potions tips. Why would it be from Draco? He's only written to me once since he got here and never to Snape. And he's gone now anyway-_

Snape looked up, sighed to find him still standing there. "It's from Draco," he said, taking Harry's elbow to steer him back to the sofa, "It seems he's finally responded to my nagging on your behalf, and has written you a letter. Let us hope it is rather more worthwhile than his last."

"Hey!" Harry protested as Snape tipped him into a controlled fall on the sofa, "It wasn't a bad note."

"It was five words, Potter," Snape responded, holding the square of parchment out of his reach, "barely a note at all. He didn't even say he loved you."

Harry flinched at that, but didn't stop trying to get the letter. "Well he wouldn't say that, would he? But 'I miss you' is about as close as any Slytherin gets, I reckon." Snape stilled for a second, giving Harry just enough time to make a snatch for the note... and miss by several inches. "Damn it," he swore as Snape palmed his forehead to press him back into the cushions, "will you just let me read it?"

"I rather doubt you _can_ read it just now, Potter," he said, resuming his seat on the end of the sofa, "perhaps you ought to have me read it out to you."

"No! It'll be mushy," he crawled over Snape before he could get away, slipping on voluminous robes and clawing at the lean, solid, struggling form beneath, "you'll laugh!"

"That's my knee, you drunken-ow!" Snape grabbed a handful of Harry's belt as he flinched and started to slip, pulling him close until he steadied. But even being half in Snape's lap, and braced against the back of the sofa, Harry was still not close enough to catch the note from those long, stained fingers. Snape smirked up at him and made the parchment crinkle teasingly. "And how mushy could it possibly be when the whelp can't manage more than 'I miss you' on his own?"

"Oh, fine," Harry huffed, "If you want to be a nosy old voyeur, then go ahead and read it!" Snape scowled, pulled back to sit up a bit straighter, but just as he opened his mouth to deliver the tirade, Harry lunged full out, falling off the sofa entirely, but snatching the parchment on his way down. He missed Snape's knee with his head, but cracked his own knee painfully on the floor

"Buffoon," Snape laughed as Harry rolled onto his back, holding his knee in both hands, "Does your centaur healing magic work when you're drunk?"

"Pffft. It's nothing." Harry pulled himself up to sit, and scooted back until he was pressed against the sofa, Snape's leg a solid warmth just at his shoulder. But opening the letter, he suddenly found that his hands were shaking. It could say anything in there -- anything at all. Draco's time at the ministry with Arthur Weasley could have been all he needed to remember how much he disliked Harry's friends. He could have changed his mind, decided to go into hiding now that he had his ward focus...Harry pressed the parchment between his fingers. It was too far thick to be just five words. But what if it was all the wrong words?

Snape's hand fell onto Harry's shoulder, a sudden, comforting weight. Wordlessly, Harry handed the note back to him, knowing that he probably couldn't read it himself. Snape, for a wonder, didn't gloat -- merely handed Harry his half-full glass of Green. Harry took a drink as the parchment crinkled open.

"Dear Harry," Snape's voice rolled out like dark velvet, smoother than his lecturing voice, and richer, "I suppose you know by now that I'm leaving today. Snape's been telling me to write you' -- there, you see, Potter? I have been delivering your messages. -- 'but every time I try, all the things I want to say to you get tangled up inside me. I've never had to say these things to anyone that mattered before." Here he paused, and Harry could hear his heart thud against his ribs, "And you do matter, Harry. You're the only thing that matters, in fact. All the rest, the Ministry, the Dark Lord, the Death Eaters -- are merely hills between us. I'll get through them. I'll come back, you have to believe that, because dying's a little thing -- people do it every day -- but never to see you again. That would be more than I could bear."

The page crinkled as Snape turned it over. Harry drew in a deep breath, though his throat ached and the firelight swam through tears. He finished the drink in a long, hard swallow. "I wish I had written to you now, every day, and twice a day while I had the time to do so. I wish I had told you every time you crossed my thoughts, every time I wanted to strangle someone and managed not to because I remembered your eyes and the way they glinted in the morning light."

Harry closed his eyes, struggling to breathe as heat stroked wetly down his cheeks. Snape's voice continued, coiling Draco's words around his heart and constricting with each syllable. "And that annoying way you drag your fringe out of your eyes. I always used to hate that, as if you couldn't be bothered to either grow it properly or find a decent barber. But now I think of it and I know I'll never rest until I see you do it again. I will hold you inside me and your memory will be my compass, so that you'll never really be away from me." Harry let his head drop back against Snape's knee, let the tears roll down into his ears, abandoned to the words and the voice and the Green. "So be safe, Harry -- please stay safe for me. Give me something to come back to, and I will find a way. Believe that, Harry, for my sake. All the love I have to give," Snape put the letter down, and Harry shivered as the parchment scraped along his damp cheek, "Draco Argentin Malfoy."

He could feel Snape's pulse through the back of his neck, where it pressed against the man's thigh, could feel his own hands trembling as he reached blindly up and fumbled to find the letter. Snape's fingers were cold, tangling briefly with his before the letter slid free. As before, the letters swam under his glance, and Harry, in nearly perfect despair, closed his eyes and let his head fall back again. "He's really gone," was all he could think of to say.

"He'll come back," Snape replied, brushing his fingers lightly over Harry's fringe. Too hopeless to question the comfort, Harry turned his face into the caress. "Did you not hear? You have to believe, for his sake. For all our sakes."

It was those words that undid the final shreds of Harry's drunken resolve. He curled hard against Snape's leg and clung as the alcohol and hesitant comfort undid years of stoic reserve. In some appalled, unaffected corner of his mind, Harry was astonished that Snape hadn't thrown him off and stalked from the room, or at least started shouting at him to stiffen his lip and stop blubbering. But he did none of those things. He just let Harry lean on him until the brief, intense storm wound down into sniffles, then he slipped a handkerchief into Harry's fist. It was black, of course.

Harry gave a watery laugh. "I think my legs are asleep. Not sure I can get up."

Snape gave a snort. "Your legs are drunk, Potter, just like the rest of you," he said, standing and hooking his hands under Harry's arms.

Harry had no choice but to cling to the Potions Master as the whole room tilted crazily. "I think you may be right." Harry said with some surprise, "I should go to bed."

"Can you _get_ to bed?"

Harry thought. "Not mine. Can't disapparate to there, don't want to fall off my broom, too far to walk."

"Which you can't just now anyway," Snape turned him, tumbled him sidelong onto the sofa, "I hope you've paid Rosemerta for the whole night, Potter." He said as he flicked his wand. Harry wriggled to feel the cushiony sofa expand beneath him, flatten and fragment until it was a bed, complete with pillows and posts and a down comforter. Which was black, of course.

Harry struggled up and began fighting off his shoes. He'd managed only one in the time it took Severus to lock and ward the door, shed his own shoes, and pull a chair to the foot of the bed. "You'll stay?" Harry asked, surprised.

Snape gave him a brief, tight smile. "Someone must be sure you do not perish of _vomitus aspiratus_ in your sleep, Potter." He batted Harry's hands out of the way and made quick work of his other shoe.

Shrugging off his robe and tunic, Harry smirked at the man as he lay back into the pillows. "Can't fool me," he said, scooting to one side of the bed, "You just don't want to be alone tonight either." Snape looked down but did not contradict. Harry watched as he removed his robe, coat, waistcoat and shoes, but patted the duvet beside him as Snape made as if to sit in the chair. "Don't do that. 'Splenty of room. I promise I won't crowd you." Black eyes glinting, he hesitated, so Harry hauled the covers back. "I don' want to have to heal your stiff back in the morning. Come on."

And Snape came slowly around the bed. "Put the blankets back, Harry," he said, "I am not made of stone." Then he drew the duvet up himself, and lay down on top so that his weight drew the fabric tight and low across Harry's body. It was comforting, in a strange way, like being held long and hard, kept safe in someone's arms -- someone who would do the watching and worrying for him, who could keep the nightmares at bay so that he himself could finally just... sleep. Perhaps that was what made him imagine a soft hand brushing the last of the wetness from his cheek as he fell into a deep green sleep.

~*~

"What is..." Harry reached across the ravaged breakfast table to touch the glittering silver pendant dangling from Severus' fingers, "It looks like a pensieve."

"Reason being that it is a pensieve, Potter," the Potions Master said, laying it on the table between the butter dish and the last piece of toast. "Zabini managed it, at my request. He may be terminally silly and with all the moral decisiveness Merlin invested in a flobberworm, but the man does know his charms."

"And it works just like normal?" Harry asked, draining his teacup.

Severus nodded. "It must be enlarged in order to fill it, but then when diminished again, it will not lose its load. And what's more, the memories you take out of it can be placed into any other pensieve for storage, while you send this back empty via owl."

Harry picked up the pendant, turned it over in his hands, feeling again that awful heat under his breastbone -- the same as he'd felt it when he'd woken with the dawn to find Severus Snape sleeping next to him. The same as he'd felt when he remembered what a fool he'd made of himself the night before.

But Severus had merely been grumpy, not scornful as Harry had feared, and Harry calling down to Rosemerta to beg for breakfast and the use of a bath had faded the grumpiness down to silence. By the time Severus was sugaring his second cup of tea, Harry had lost all fear of the man. But that didn't mean he was ready to look back on the night before without wanting to squirm.

"I asked him to create this once it became clear that Mr. Malfoy had no intention of overcoming his aversion to correspondence," Snape went on, though Harry knew he'd seen his blush, "And even considering last night's offering, I believe this will be a better means of providing you regular reassurance that the love of your life retains full bodily functions."

Harry felt himself blush even harder, and had to look down. "I'm sorry. I know you must be exasperated with all this -- and me getting sloppy on you as well. You must have hated that. I've no idea how you kept from hexing me silly, but..." he bit his lip and risked a glance upward, "still, I'm glad you were here last night, even if I don't understand why you did it."

"And should I have left you to your despair then, Mr. Potter?" Snape's voice was thin and chilly.

"No, that's not what I meant," Harry rushed, "it's just it's so new, being able to think of you as a friend when you'd hated the sight of me for so long. I hardly know what to expect when I can't expect you to be sarcastic and criticize everything I say or do. I mean I like it -- I like being able to talk to you and not be on my guard. And last night, I'd have been a wreck if you hadn't been there. Hell, I was a wreck anyway, but you just..." Harry shrugged, not sure how to finish that uncomfortable sentence. Then his eye fell on the pensieve pendant again, and he smiled. "And you know about Draco too, so I don't have to hide it around you. It's ironic, isn't it, that you're the only one I can talk to about him."

And Severus's smile turned a little more genuine as he reached for the teapot and poured more of the strong amber brew for them both. "Ironic. Yes, I would call it that."

They were silent for a long moment, but for the sound of their spoons stirring sugar into Rosemerta's china cups. Eventually, the sound of footsteps on the stairs and voices in the lower rooms burst through the companionable quiet. Time was passing, and there were things to do.

Harry took one last drink of his tea and slid the pensieve across the table to Snape. "Thank you, Sir. For last night. For this. For telling me you'll try to look after him." He didn't think about his next move, just did it -- just stepped close to his friend, leaned down and hugged him. Just pressed his forehead to Severus' as if his startled eyes hadn't flown wide and his body hadn't shocked stiff at Harry's touch. Because friends did that, and if Severus Snape was Harry Potter's friend, then Severus Snape could bloody well stand to get used to it, he thought.

"Keep yourself safe too, won't you Sir?" Harry said, refusing to blush as he released the shocked Potions Master and stepped away, "Because you matter too." Snape nodded, mute for once. Harry couldn't help but grin.

"And make Draco use that bloody thing, not just wear it as a fashion accessory, won't you?"

And finally, Severus laughed, sharp and harsh as a crow's call as he swept the pendant and chain off the table in one long fingered hand. "He shall use it, Mr. Potter, if I have to hold him under _imperius_ myself!"


	4. Act Four

The old farmhouse had once had a barn, before the Muggles had fought a war here. It had been a good barn; built in the old style with pegs and spells and solid stone. Snug, in such mild winters as Arras ever got, and airily open to the summer breezes that rambled across the green hills from the Channel. Now, however, the wizarding family that had built it was long expired, leaving the farmhouse empty, its chimneys sagging, roof falling to rot and ruin in the endless rains that kept these bomb-scarred hills green. Of the magnificent barn, all that remained was a rather impressive pile of stone footings and half-burned timbers. That, and a single tall granary tower, abandoned but for mice, rats, and whichever of the Order happened to be on night watch.

Tonight it was Moody atop the stone ledge, still as a gargoyle and rimed in the moon's last cold rays as it slipped below the clouds. Remus, edging carefully out onto the granary's rooftop, shivered at the baneful glimpse of his lifelong nemesis. _Four days._ the moon whispered gooseflesh across his skin; _Four days._

_And not a moment before then._ he thought back, setting his basket on the stones and carefully approaching the silent auror.

"Any movement, Alastor?" He asked.

The man made no reply, so Remus brushed his shoulder with a wary finger, ready to spring out of reach of a swinging arm. Again, nothing. Remus leaned around the overhang, peered at Moody's face and then sighed. He was fast asleep, with only the one magical eye open and spinning wildly over the shadowy landscape.

"That hex missed me by leagues," Remus grumbled a passable imitation of Moody's voice, "Man with my experience has naught to fear from a wee narcolepsy hex anyroad! Man with your bloody experience ought to know when he's cursed at least," he fished out his wand and gave a practiced flick. _Finite incantum, Revivo!_

"Wha-Whogoesthere?!"

"Easy!" Remus steadied the old man's wild start before it could carry him over the ledge, "I've come to relieve you, Alastor. Go on back to the farmhouse and see if you can't get some sleep, why don't you?"

"Sleep?" He huffed suspiciously, "What we need's action, not more sleeping! This is taking too long as it is! Why every day we drag our feet along is one more day-"

"-day the sneaking, rotten Death Eaters have to spot us coming," Remus finished the sentence along with him, "I know. But we're only humans, Alastor, and humans need to sleep. Which I can't, and you can't seem to stop doing, so why don't you just let me take the rest of this watch for you?"

"You're not implying, are you young whelp, that I'm less than vigilant on my watch?"

Remus managed to neither smile, nor to snarl. "Of course not, Alastor. I find it creepy beyond measure that you can provide a running transcript of everything that happens during one of your odd not-precisely-conscious spells. I'm just saying since I can't sleep anyway, you might just as well go on inside," he cast a sharp eye at the clouds massing out over the Channel in the west, took a careful sniff of the late-spring air, "before it rains."

And it was a testament to the old auror's true weariness that he actually agreed to go. But they were all of them on the edge, weren't they? Three solid weeks of planning and hunting and ambushing, of never sleeping more deeply than a doze, of never failing to wonder who was looking, who saw and who wondered, of stifling nightmares in alcohol and nerves in endless hands of solitaire, so the faces of those you'd killed didn't keep you from being able to do what came next... Three solid weeks of guerilla warfare had taken a heavy toll on them all.

"We can do this," Remus told himself, turning his back on the moon to watch Alastor clump across the weed-choked farmyard, "we have to do it. We have to be strong enough this one, last time."

But the moon whispered, sly and snide in his ear. _Last time? You don't think there'll be another Dark Lord along once you've laid this one to rest?_ The wind gusted, ruffled his hair like laughter, _You're creating nothing but a vacuum with all this madness. Someone will come along and fill it._ The thought made his already feverish bones ache with depression, but Remus refused to slump beneath the weight. Instead he turned his moon-sharpened gaze up toward the chateau which sprawled across the hilltop two tiny valleys away.

The building thrust up in a delicate tracery against the lightening horizon, elegant and insincere as the polished mien of its owners. And as dark within. The Malfoys were asleep, and Remus couldn't help feeling more than a little bit resentful. They were almost definitely sleeping far better than any of the Order had done in weeks. Featherbeds and warming charms, linen sheets and lavender, and terrorized house elves to provide breakfast sometime well after dawn. Chocolat and pastries dripping butter...

No. He'd rather sleep hard and fitfully on a straw-packed pallet, wrap up in his cloak against the chill, and wake to Hagrid's questionable cooking than sleep with all the ghosts those two had under their beds. He stretched, wincing as his shoulder popped, then his elbow.

"It'll be enough to see Voldemort gone," he promised himself, "that's all I want; peace for Lily and James and Sirius. For Harry. For me. If all this can win that, then someone else can take care of the next bloody Dark Lord!"

Then he leaned into the ledge and squinted. His eyes, hunting-sharp for the nearness of the moon and for want of Snape's wolfsbane potion, focused on a bulky flutter along the chateau's north tower roofline. The gargoyle had detected something. He watched, hand on his wand as the dark shape launched itself flapping into the air, but it only circled the grounds of its own home territory. Whatever had challenged the chateau's wards, the guardian wasn't having much luck at all in finding it.

Which meant it was probably just Severus. Remus smiled, half annoyed, half relieved as he turned to the basket and began laying out the tea. Two mugs, a small twist of sugar for his, and a tiny cup of milk to take the edge off the savage brew inside the spelled thermos. Remus unwrapped two of Hagrid's treacle scones he'd saved from the remains of 'dinner', and by the time he'd turned to look over the tower's edge again, he could see the tall, dark form gliding silently from under the shadow of the chestnut trees. The sleepy ravens muttered as he passed beneath them, but otherwise made no comment.

"Snape," he called softly, knowing his voice would travel through the pre-dawn quiet. Sure enough, a pale smudge appeared atop that column of black beneath the trees, "up here." The wind gusted his dark cloak aside, carried Remus the expected smell of stale potion's fume, elevated nerves, crushed grass, and too many washes over a cold bucket. It was Snape, without question, but he still beckoned the man up.

Ever since last week's close call with Bellatrix Lestrange (Remus thought the dead woman's name in a long, well-satisfied drawl) it was the job of the sentry to detain even familiar faces. What polyjuice could conceal, after all, a ten-minute chat could almost always reveal. And anyway, there was a dank mist in those two intervening valleys, and Lupin rather thought Severus could use a proper warm-up before he took to his cold bed in the attic with Draco Malfoy.

Snape, it seemed, agreed. He paused dismounting the ladder, his dark-adapted eyes taking in the mugs and the thermos in Remus's grip. His craggy, pinched features relaxed just _that_ much as the top came off the thermos and potent whiff steamed into the chilly air. "You may live," he declared, and his step across the granary roof, while weary, was at least steady.

Remus chuckled, pouring for them both. "Generous of you," he mused, handing the chipped green mug over, "though I suspect it's more to do with your not wanting to write Minerva's paper alone." He bit the end of the sugar twist and ripped it open. Snape plucked the packet from his hand before he'd half emptied it. "Hey!"

"What?" Snape dumped the rest into his own mug and crumpled the twist.

"That's my sugar." Snape only smirked and stirred in milk as Remus clarified. "You don't take sugar, Severus, you never did. Oolong Black, straight, boiling hot, and strong enough to dissolve glass -- that's been your cuppa for as long as I've known you!"

"Is that so?" The dark-haired man sipped and somehow managed not to flinch at the scald, nor lose one measure of that insufferable smug, damn him. "Well, I suppose with observational skills like that, one can easily understand why I am the spy, and you are the diplomat. Speaking of which, what are you doing awake anyhow, Lupin?" Snape changed the subject without any attempt at subtlety, "It ought to be Moody's watch now."

"It was," Remus scowled and recovered the spoon to stir milk into his own not-quite-sweet-enough tea, "I sent him inside. Seemed a waste to have him up here seeing as how I was awake anyhow."

Snape gave him a long look, and Remus could tell by the sharp burst of nervous sweat that he was thinking about the wolfsbane potion they'd had to miss this month. Snape hadn't the time or materials to brew it, and as the full moon neared, and their strategies developed... They both glanced to the west, but the moon was no more than a low, bright smudge behind the massing clouds over England -- a pale threat still four days from deadly. "You ought to have been sleeping," Snape observed at length, "You're not meant to meet Madame Gévaudan and her pack until midday at the earliest, and from all you and Malfoy have led us to believe that Lady is not one to suffer clumsy inattention."

Remus shrugged and sipped his tea. "Then I'll just have to do my best and hope the exhausted look inspires sympathy instead of the challenge instinct. But I just can't sleep now, Severus -- not without a potion, and I wouldn't take one even if we had any. It's just the rain," he pointed at the rolling clouds, "makes my joints ache this close to-"

"To your time of the month, Lupin?" Snape smirked, "Have some chocolate, why don't you? Miss Tonks and Mrs. Weasley insist it helps."

"Arse," Remus growled, "see if I share my tea with you again."

"You will if I bring you sugar tomorrow morning, I'll warrant."

Remus grunted, squinting at the chateau. The gargoyle had given up its hunt and landed, becoming just another ragged lump on the north tower spire. "Where do you keep going, Severus," he asked, "Every morning, you slip back to the headquarters between watches, and-" he glanced back at Severus' restless movement, and shook his head. "No, don't look at me like that, I'm not accusing you of anything -- at this point that would be ludicrous. I just wonder what you're getting up to out there, what you're risking on your own while we're all tucked up asleep down here."

Severus gave a long sigh, turning his back to the wind to stare at the eastern horizon, where the rime of silver was beginning to blush at the idea of dawn. "Nothing I am not already accustomed to risking, Lupin," he answered at length, in a voice barely louder than the breeze, "You needn't concern yourself."

"Severus-"

"As for my errand, I am merely... posting letters." Remus didn't bother trying to conceal his surprise at that, and Snape gave another smirk. "It occurred to me that we could very well perish in this endeavor. We are far from home, unsupported and alone against enemies who have considerably less tactical restraint than we, and bearing all due respect to Vector and Flitwick," here he paused and lifted his left arm, turning his glittering ward focus to the eastern sky in a thoughtful sort of salute, "they could rival Gryffindors for their blind faith in what amounts to an untried defense. Even if you survive this, there is still every chance that Malfoy and I will not." He lowered his hand and curled it around his mug to drink, "Whether we succeed or fail however, and whether I survive to see either outcome, I believe it to be worth a factual record."

Remus nodded, not up to cheerleading at that hour in the morning. "Moody thinks you're betraying us, you and Malfoy," he said instead, "He thinks you're slipping off to meet with the opposition and laying plans to trap us all."

Severus barked his crow's laugh. "Moody believes no such thing. He'd have hexed me flat and flayed Draco the instant he got us out of Britain if he did." Remus snickered agreement into his cup as Snape went on, "Alastor Moody is simply entertaining himself and us all with his conspiracy theories and his constant, ridiculous vigilance," he finished his tea with a long swallow and turned to set the green cup on the ledge. It wobbled on the uneven stone. "And I, for one, am happy to listen to his nonsense. It makes a nice change over Hagrid's ingratiating cheer, and Draco's petulant complaining."

"Snape, hold still." Remus said, and Snape froze, his face hatchet-sharp and suddenly wary. Remus closed the distance in two strides, and snatched a fragment of white from Snape's hair. Snape hissed a curse and flinched as a couple of strands pulled loose, but Remus ignored him, holding the white fluff of owl's down up to his nose for a deep sniff.

He drew the scent into this mouth, high and thin over his tongue and palate, eyes drifting low and lip curling as he tasted the faint odour. Then he sneezed, and gave Snape a sharp yellow glare. "This is from Hedwig."

Snape made no answer.

Remus forced down the hot burst of fear/anger/annoyance which washed over him. "Severus," he took a deep breath, "communicating with Harry now -- are you sure that's wise? What if he tries to come after-"

"Believe me, Lupin," Snape cut off his words with a scornful wave, "while I'm sure we would all be glad of a young and powerful healer's services just now, the very last thing I want is to find Harry Potter on our threshold while there are still Death Eaters unaccounted for. Which is precisely the reason for my communiqués." Remus scowled deeper, and Snape gave a pained sigh as he turned to explain himself. "As long as there _is some_sort of news, Potter can, perhaps, be persuaded to sensible restraint with the pleasant fiction that we have things in hand. However, should the news cease, then you know as well as I that he would be here seeking our trail within the week."

Remus sighed as, in the trees below the granary, the first sleepy dawn choristers began warming up their riffs. "I suppose you're right. But shouldn't it be Malfoy writing to him? Since they're, well, you know." Remus was rather proud of having kept the distaste from colouring his voice, but from the look Snape gave him, the man wasn't fooled.

"I assure you, Malfoy has more..." Snape's thin lips twisted, "pressing things to do than write to his lover. He tells me so every time I mention it to him, though from what I can tell, those obligation mostly involve baiting Hagrid, scowling at the maps, annoying Moody, complaining about the accommodations, and wanking ferociously whenever he thinks I'm asleep."

"Hmph, and none too quietly either. So, he actually won't write? When you're already going out night after night?" Remus almost laughed, "Severus, _I'd_ have had you carrying notes to Harry if I'd known that!"

"Don't get ideas," he growled, "And Draco's just afraid. It's one thing to pick a fight with a pen, and quite another to make love with one. Oh, stop turning green, you fraud, I've seen some of the tripe you and Black used to write each other, you know exactly what I mean!" Which, of course, Remus did. But that didn't make thinking of _Harry_ and _Draco Malfoy_ trading love notes any easier. Snape went on. "Still, his antipathy borders on paranoia for some strange reason. If I believed in re-incarnation, I should suspect that young man's last life ended in a tragic, freakish quill impalement."

"Ink poisoning, perhaps?" Remus allowed a smile, wrapping his cloak tighter as the wind gusted, damp and fresh across his neck. "Death by parchment cut?" He shook his head and returned to his topic. "Either way, it can't be safe, you walking out so far each night, even if it does give Malfoy more 'quality time' alone with his hand. And you on your own as well."

Snape's expression was almost soft in the pinking light. "What about any of this is safe, Lupin? I go out far enough to meet the owl inobtrusively on this road or that field, or that copse down the valley. In the early hours, I warrant no more attention than any man walking abroad."

But Remus wasn't fooled. "Mmm. Until you decide to spy on Malfoy's chateau on your way back, at least. The gargoyle didn't seem to think you were an innocuous pedestrian."

"Pfft. He's used to not seeing me by now -- made a habit of it, in fact," Snape folded his arms across his breast and leaned on the ledge with a strangely cocky air, "He'd be terribly confused if he ever did get a decent look at me, in fact. And he's reported 'something on the grounds' so often that I'd be rather astonished to find Lucius receives his reports at all anymore."

"He's a fool if he doesn't," Remus mused, peering at the far-off house, "He has to have realized by now that his Death Eaters disappearing and having deadly accidents is no string of bad luck. We've gotten nine already, and five of those just in this last week. The rest must know something's happening. They must suspect."

"Of course they do," Snape agreed, "and while they grow more wary and watchful, we slowly fall to pieces. Not one of us remains in fighting trim -- Moody falling asleep three steps out of every twelve, you without your wolfsbane, Draco's ribs still as fragile as tissue paper, Vance blinded and just barely clinging to life. Even Jones and Hagrid are courting powershock," those long, elegant hands chaffed along Snape's sleeves, less defensive now than an attempt at bolstering comfort. "Have you considered, Lupin, that we might very well fail?"

_Oh no you don't!_ Remus set his teeth against the Slytherin's contagious gloom, and swore to himself that he would come back from his meeting with a positively _enormous_ bar of chocolate, and force some down Severus' throat if he had to get Hagrid to sit on him! "Had you considered, Snape, that we just might succeed? The Gévaudan pack is-"

"French, when one comes down to it," Snape said, in just the way he'd have discussed muggles a month or two ago, "Which you, Remus Lupin, are not. With luck, your negotiation skills may overcome two centuries of international bad blood, but you must forgive me if I am too Slytherin to put much faith in luck."

"Even if it's all you have?"

Severus didn't answer, just reached across the ledge and poured the last of the tea into his green mug. "Well, if what I glimpsed up at the chateau was any hint," he said with such a grimace as to make Remus wonder if he mightn't have misremembered Snape's tastes after all, "we shall be finishing things very soon now, one way or the other.

"Oh?" Remus perked in spite of himself, "Do tell."

Snape shrugged. "Nothing to tell that would make any sense to you, but a spy knows how to read the signs; doors in use that hadn't been before, some rooms lit, others dark, chimneys smoking hard, though the nights are too warm for fires," he cast a hard look at the chateau, stained rose and gold in the rising light, "Something is afoot, Lupin, and we shall most likely know the particulars rather sooner than we'd like."

"You needn't sound so cheerful about it," Remus grumbled as Snape grasped the ladder and made as if to swing over the ledge, "Where are you going now?"

"Away from your wretched tea," he paused to smirk, then made a point of draining his cup, "I believe I'll see if I can wake Moody long enough to report what I found up at the chateau, and then..." Snape shrugged, stretched and made his spine give a horrible, cascading crack, "then I suppose I might write another letter."

~*~

_ \-- I recall Mrs. Lestrange was quite an accomplished potioner at one point in her life. Not so skilled or talented as myself, of course, but still above such a common mistake as this one. I suppose it was either Azkaban, or Voldemort which had such a detrimental effect upon her mental faculties, for not even madness would induce a brewer with one ounce of sense to try and skimp on polyjuice's third stage simmer. _

We were, however, quite fortunate she did so. While her physical resemblance to young Malfoy was precise, and her behavioral mimicry surprisingly acute for one so clearly mad, she smelled only like her own self. Lupin's heightened olfactory perceptions detected her before she could complete her intended mischief. Properly brewed polyjuice would, of course, have altered her scent, as I am certain you remember from your... class work, so let that remind you of the root lesson; do a thing correctly, completely and competently, or else run the very real risk that it will kill you.

Hagrid sustained no more than a few scratches and a bite to his arm for restraining the woman once Lupin alerted us. We broke her wand first, as we had no intention of letting her walk away from our encounter, and then Moody and I began to question her. She proved quite useful indeed, despite herself. With her information, we hope to complete our agenda within the next two weeks. And, you will be comforted, perhaps, to know she was informed that your measure of vengeance for Black's death was part of her ultimate payment. Or, if you are above such petty revenges as that, let it comfort you to know that Bellatrix Lestrange no longer has the ability to harm you or those you love.

On a related note, allow me to wonder for a moment upon a peculiarity to French farmers; they all seem to raise swine in addition to their normal crops. There must be two score of swine within a radius of ten miles hereabouts. Quite convenient, that.

In closing, Draco is miserable company, which description goes farther toward illustrating his continued good health than any other missive I might include here. And, from the state of the pensieve I owl to you every second day, I am in no doubts as to his adequately fulfilling your expectations of correspondence. Thus, I will offer only that he seems to miss you. (In case he has managed not to say so.)

The others are as expected; Moody insane, Hagrid irrepressible, Lupin cloying. The rest you do not know so well, but they carry on as best they may be expected to do. For myself, I remain as you remember me; bad tempered, sharp tongued, and ultimately disliked. So you see, all is right with the world.  
I hope that centaur is keeping you too busy to worry unnecessarily.  
Your Servant,  
Severus Snape.

~*~

Severus put his quill aside and tapped the parchment with his wand. The still-wet ink shivered, then the letters broke apart and hopped randomly about the page. He let them do so until they'd achieved a properly unintelligible jumble, and then he tapped the parchment again, shrinking it to the size of a matchbook.

The thin snore from the corner bed drew his head around, and Severus took a long moment to examine his roommate and rival. The three weeks of hard living had left its mark more visibly on Draco's ethereal beauty than upon any of them. He had gone from willowy to starveling-thin, his porcelain skin doing nothing to hide the bruise of too little sleep under his eyes. Even his silver-pale hair was dulled from poor food and the cheap soap they had to use.

_And Potter would love you all the more for it, wouldn't he, you undeserving wretch?_ Snape mused without any real bitterness. It was, after all, Harry's ability to love -- wholly and readily, not cheaply as Zabini did -- which made him so attractive in Snape's eyes. He had offered Severus more kindness, more caring, and after the fashion of friendship, more love than he'd known since Albus had died. Not all of that had been enlightened self interest, he told himself, knowing it was pathetic and unlikely -- the boy had little enough to gain from pretending to care about him now that he'd won his dream's desire.

_Speaking of which..._

He reached under his collar and drew out the tiny pensieve -- empty now, and hungrily hollow in his hand. He set it on the table and enlarged it with a ringing tap of his wand. The sound warped oddly as the pensieve grew to its proper size, but that didn't awaken the exhausted youth in the corner.

Severus turned. "Draco. You should use the pensieve. Potter will want to hear something from you."

"Mmmmph," said Draco, turning his face to the wall and pulling his cloak and thin blanked high over his ear. Thus, as usual -- awake or asleep. _Later, I'll do it later, after I... I'll do it later._

Severus allowed a smirk, and went on to the next step. "Draco, if you do not use it, I will."

"Fine..." the cranky reply echoed off the wall, as expected.

Severus waited until the thready snore arose once again before he turned to lay both his hands on the waiting pensieve. Harry would never forgive him this deception, should he ever learn of it, Severus knew. He did hold faith, however, that he could rely on Draco's inherent self-interest to accept the borrowed feathers when the time came. Draco wouldn't want to be exposed as careless any more than Severus did as duplicitous. No, Harry would never know it was the wrong heart Hedwig delivered to him in this silver bowl, shaved off in tiny, hopeless pieces day after day. And if the giving of that heart in chunks small enough to fit into an owl's talons was futility itself -- well, what else had Severus ever used that organ for anyway? What matter if his heart's greatest achievement was to seduce a green-eyed ghost from another man's shadow? At least it would get some exercize before he died.

He closed his eyes, focused on the taste of sweetened, milky tea in his mouth, and then drew the beginnings of a memory to mind.

~*~

It is not so difficult; this vision of you is engraved so deeply into my memory that I can recall it to my closed eyes almost without a thought. Your hand pulling back the duvet, your face lit in a smile, gently welcoming -- you must forgive an old man his fantasies that I make you nude, sleek and eager in that semi-darkness. I sharpen your gaze, erase the flush of drunkenness from your cheeks, then let a little of it return so that now your face is bright with desire, and I can glimpse you like a rosy pearl between the soft layers that surround you.

'Come on.' You smile, coquet, but you do not tease -- your green gaze is split and hovering between innocent discovery and a weighty, radiant passion. Against its pull, neither man nor god could resist. I am no god, and sometimes not even much of a man, but since this never happened -- never will happen -- I will not even try to resist you.

A pause to repaint certain elements of this scene; the room must be more like that one you rented on your first night. Dark sheets become pale, the sitting room blooms behind you, afternoon light spilling lace-patterns across the long floor, I recall the faint smell of soup to erase that foul liquor on your breath. Then with another thought, it becomes tea, sweet as you like it, milky when you breathe my name across my cheek.

And it is my name for now, not his. I will change that later... after this fiction is drafted in my head, and before it finds its way to the pensieve. It is too much work to imagine you in such perfection and keep track of a second lithe, not-mine body as well. For now, I remain myself, thin and bony, sallow and dark, and so hard for you that my flesh weeps milky tears as I slide into your soft, warm nest and wind you into my arms.

I remember perfectly the feel of your cheek and downy hair against my fingers, and the texture is just as silken against my lips as you slither atop me, weighing me down into softness and eager, grinding heat. I begin to sweat at once.

'Want you," your lips move against my own, and it is neither request nor demand -- it is simply stated fact. I reply in an older, simpler language and your rolling groan lets me know you agree wholeheartedly. The writhing friction of you is perfect and I cannot breathe beneath your weight and driving tongue, but I would rather die thus than end this kiss.

You, it seems, would rather I not die. The cool air kisses my naked chest as you pull away, tenting up the covers around us to seize my hand and guide it down your back. The long sweep of muscle gives into your sacrum, a double thumbprint in the velvet of your arse, like a master-sculptor's mark -- I cannot help lingering there, stroking until your restless whine-and-wriggle nudges your eager cock against my own. I capture us both in one hand while I allow you to guide the other down into your cleft, into your heat which opens to welcome my touch. You must have prepared earlier. The thought of you, knuckling deep into yourself, eyes half-lidded and burning, mouth dropped open to pant at the sensation, drags a groan out of me from somewhere down around my bollocks.

And suddenly you have had enough. Sleek and desperate, you lift yourself away from my fingers, and reach down to take my cock, separating it from yours, and from my gripping fist. I stare at your hungry green eyes, trying not to feel too much wonder as you lock my gaze and take me deep into you. Inexorable, like gravity, like time; the tide inside my veins thunders as you surround me slowly, with arms and legs and lips and body like some lithe incubus with a taste for old men's souls.

No. I must retreat from that thought. Age cannot factor here. You are merely hungry for this, and I am merely starving for you. I fill your mouth with your name, mumbled over and over like an idiot's mantra as you arch and twist above me. I don't want to spend first, but I fear I will, and the flicker in your slitted eyes hints that I don't stand much chance of holding out. Just the challenge my competitive nature needs. I reach between us, take you in hand and use your inexorable pace against you. I am closer to the precipice than you are, but I vow to myself that you will not outlast me by long.

A flash of your teeth. Challenge accepted. And from there it is a race between the angle of my hips, the precise aim of my thumb over your seeping cockhead, and your punishing, breathless rhythm. And within reach of the finish, we are in lock-step, each hauling the other along breath by panting breath. My shout twines with yours, and the tide overtakes us both in pounding release.

I manage one more thing as you collapse heaving against me, slick and sticky and perfect. My lips find your ear to whisper. "I miss you."

I must remember to change that voice later.

~*~

"She's running!"

Instantly, shouts echoed around the ruined fortress. Booted feet clattered, spellfire glimmered and sparked in the twilight.

"Someone get the stairs! The bloody STAIRS!"

"Hagrid! The apparation wards!"

"Aye, I got 'em! You mind yer back now!"

"HERE! She's over--"

_Sizzle. Crack. Shatter._ Half the bunker shuddered and collapsed into a twist of concrete and rusty rebar, filled the air choking thick and gritty with desperation. Draco shielded his nose and mouth with one hand, squinting into the billowing dust for any flicker of white skin or platinum hair.

"Snape?" Lupin's voice, ragged and angry, "Damn it! Where are you?"

"Lose your little traitor, Wolf?" Narcissa's voice echoed through the dimly empty space, and Draco thought he could hear reckless desperation under her polished tones. This was the voice he heard through the walls late at night, counterpoint to his father's implacable chill and weighty scorn. She knew she was losing.

She knew, and she meant to take her pound of flesh when she went down.

"You can't apparate out, Narcissa," Lupin replied, fury making his voice deeply resonant, rumbling as though the wolf snarled out of his throat, "And if you had a portkey, you'd have used it by now."

"Would I? Perhaps." The voice was in a different place now -- higher, but still cloaked in the maddening echoes. Draco closed his eyes and put his back to a wall to listen. "But perhaps I haven't done what I came here to do. Tell me, Wolf, have you been enjoying my son? He looks rather hard-used."

_There! The metal stairs to the catwalk along the ceiling!_ Draco's eyes flashed open, and his wand came up to find his mother glaring truimphantly along the trained length of her own wand, not twenty feet above him. His throat closed, bollocks clenched and spine shock-straightened as his mind fought an instantaneous war. _Mother! My mother she'll kill me she can't kill me I can't kill her I have to MOVE!!!_

Shouting a wordless warning, Draco threw himself back through a half-collapsed doorway as spellfire erupted all around the ruined gunnery fort. He heard the aborted crack of apparation and scrambled to his feet, wand outstretched and hardly shaking at all.

"I have you now, my baby viper," she purr-whispered under the shouting, just around the corner, just through the doorway. Draco's breath caught in his throat like a sob. "I do have a portkey, you know. I'll use it for both of us. He'll take you back. He always liked you."

Movement. In the room with him. Draco half-turned, a ragged gasp on his lips until Snape's craggy face appeared out of the shadows, one finger raised in warning. Blood from a cut above his eye made a gory mask in the gloom as he ghosted to the wall beside the door, just where Narcissa surely lurked.

Draco swallowed. "Well, that's one of us, anyway," he said, stalling. Snape beckoned him closer to the door. He took a cautious step. "But will he buy me a pony?"

"You aren't being clever, Draco," she said in her severest mother-voice, but whatever else she had in mind to say was arrested in a squawk and scuffle as the potions master whipped around the corner and grabbed her bodily. Shouts echoed outside, Draco's heart echoed inside; three shattering, disbelieving beats, and then he was striding forward, wand raised high.

And then his mother came stumbling through the doorway in a whirl of torn robes and flying hair. She crashed into him, headlong and helpless. They went down in a ferocious tangle and Draco yelped as his wand was wrenched from his grip. She made only a grunt, her weight an ungainly mass far beyond what seemed right for the willowy, delicate figure which had always graced his father's arm. Horrified, Draco twisted as soon as he could, rolled the shuddering woman under him and pinned her down.

And thus came to look his mother squarely in her remaining eye as she died.

"Malfoy!" Running feet. And a clomping peg as well. Draco held the still, slender shoulders dazedly, and did not look away.

"He's here," Snape's voice, weary and low, but steady. "It's over."

"Is he-"

"She's contained then?"

"She's dead," Draco heard Snape say. From the corner of his eye, he could see the man physically blocking the others out of the room, and he was grateful for it. Fluid welled up around the length of Draco's wand, pooled beside her classic, straight nose, then streaked dark and slow down her smooth cheek -- blood and vitreous humour, both now a sluggish ooze owing its force to gravity, cut with salty clarity by tears from her ruptured duct.

_Odd, isn't it,_ he thought dazedly, _ that the other eye weeps as well?_

"What about the portkey?" Moody's voice, gruff and gravelly and utterly devoid of sympathy.

"She was lying." Jones; apparently still alive, and more certain than she'd any right to be, "She'd have used it if she had one."

"Not necessarily," Lupin began.

"Can't pass up the chance," Moody cut in, clomping past Snape into the room. Draco flinched as his sudden, harsh _lumos_ banished the softening shadows. "Let's get her things-"

"No!" Draco shouted, hunching as though to shield her body with his own, "Don't touch her!"

"Draco," Lupin choked, "Merlin, is that your-"

"Easy, lad," Moody reached for his shoulder, and Draco swung wildly, hitting nothing.

"No! Get away, damn you!"

"Enough." Snape's tone cut like ice through the red haze in Draco's eyes, and was finally enough to tear his gaze away from his mother's ruined face. But looking up, he found his mentor addressing the rest, not him. "Leave, all of you. Give the boy a moment alone."

_Alone?_ Draco sniffed as Moody's wild face went dark and suspicious, _They'd be stupid to leave me alone if there's a portkey on her..._

And Snape knew that as well. "I'll stay with him," he said to the rest in a voice which brooked no refusal. Moody looked about to try nonetheless, until Snape turned and made as if to push him bodily out the door. "And yes, Alastor, if there _is_ a portkey, we shall return with it presently."

"Hmph," the old auror grumbled and let himself be herded, "See that you do so!" Then he clomped three steps out into the hallway and fell promptly asleep.

"Oh bloody hell," Jones sighed, "not again."

"Severus, you're bleeding." Lupin stepped forward, holding up a handkerchief, which Snape plucked from his hand with a growl.

"Later, man, later!" Draco looked down once more. She hadn't changed, except that she seemed suddenly... smaller. Shrivelled upon herself in some way he couldn't actually define. Her eye was flat and unfocused, and his hand shook as he tried to close the lid.

Snape once more appeared at the periphery of his vision, this time as a pair of dust-scuffed boots just outside the artful tumble of Narcissa's disarrayed curls. "Are you well?" he asked, then when Draco laughed, amended, "Are you _injured_, Draco?"

He shook his head, clenched both fists on his thighs. "I need to get my wand." Merlin, was that thin voice his?

Snape crouched. "Shall I?"

Draco shook his head again, and managed to reach for the gleaming spike of wood. For the murder weapon. Snape caught his wrist before he'd touched his wand however. Startled, Draco shot the man a glare, only to find that dark gaze trained fiercely down -- on the dead woman's face. Following the look, Draco gasped and recoiled to see the blood on her cheek beginning to creep and curl and spin into a long, elegant script.

His father's hand. Draco sucked a cold breath that sat like a fist in his belly.

_Well, Draco, I am almost impressed with you. You and your band of white-hatted heroes have done an admirable job of paring away the dead wood amongst the Dark Lord's followers. You seem to have overcome your dislike of blood and death well enough for this work -- there may be hope for you yet._

The writing, having filled up the corpse's cheeks and chin, curled under the jawbone and Snape tipped her head back so they could follow the words. Draco got started on her collar, glancing from her buttons to the bloody letters with dizzying, nervous flickers.

_ Did you enjoy this one, Draco? Little boys often dream of fucking or killing their mothers, I'm told. I know I certainly did when I was only a little younger than you. Were you hard when you killed her? Were you sorry you didn't have time to throw her down and take her first? Will you toss off to the memory of her death rattle as you huddle in whatever miserable cave your allies deem suitable shelter?_

Draco squeezed his eyes closed and reminded himself that Lucius wasn't there, couldn't hear the denial he longed to shout. And he would have only laughed at it anyway. Snape touched his hand, briefly. The words were halfway down her throat. Draco ripped savagely at Narcissa's her high collar with its many tiny buttons, kept ripping until her breast and belly gleamed in Snape's gentle _lumos_. White parchment tickled with crimson ink.

_Narcissa, however, was nearly the last of my culls, and so now this game we play shall change somewhat. I have, at this moment, several guests at one of my estates. Do not bother trying to guess which one, as you haven't the time to be sure. You might know my guests, but most assuredly your compatriots would find them familiar -- a minor politician, (assistant to the Minister, I understand) and two aurors who seem to be always about the man._

"Weasley. Damn it," Snape cursed under his breath, Draco merely ripped his mother's lacy vest out of the way of the crimson thread.

_This, then, is your chance, boy. On your mother's body (and again, I say, well done Draco,) you will find two portkeys. The one, her brooch, is for Severus. You will need to collect, or break his wand before you allow him to touch it, for while our Lord values his Potion's Master, we all know the man has gotten above himself of late. He must be reminded of his station before he is welcomed back among us._

Draco glanced at Snape, who nodded. Lucius' first miscalculation; assuming Draco was there alone, proved that he couldn't actually see what had happened. He was only guessing, and now they knew it.

_The other is a memento I rather assumed you might want for yourself; Narcissa's wedding band._ The bloody script cramped upward over her left nipple, then straightened out again, _You needn't fear to collect it, son, for that portkey is timed. It will bring you to me at dawn tomorrow, when we shall settle old scores between us, as Malfoys ought to do. Your dueling second will be provided by myself of course. The portkey will, naturally, bring only you, and will activate only in its prescribed time. I should like to think by now you know better than to tamper with any portus enchantment of mine._

Draco swallowed. Snape merely moved the breast upward as the writing scrolled on.

_You WILL come to me, Draco, make no mistake in that. The guests at my table insure your cooperation, for your compatriots will care very much about these guest's continued good health. And too, your compatriots would find themselves quite put out should these guests' bodies be used in -- oh, any of a dozen compromising ways. Believe that I do not exaggerate when I claim that I have it within my power to create a war between England and several of her Continental Peers. I need only this one politician and his aurors to do it._ Draco blinked up as Snape's fist curled tightly on the dead woman's shoulder. His face was ice pale and fearsome, as though the glare alone could blast a curse back along that elegant crimson scrawl. Draco swallowed and looked down to watch the last of the message scroll along his mother's white belly.

_You needn't tell the others what you have seen here, by the way. I expect they'll have foiled Dolohov's half-arsed ambush by now, and killed him. Thus the portions of my missive of which they need to be aware are even now coming to their attention. And, to spare you the trouble of disposing of your own murdered mother's desecrated body -- and, I am curious, did you enjoy staring at her breasts? They always were perfectly beautiful, weighty in the hand and firm beneath that rose-petal skin. Well. I'm certain you know by now just how they feel. -- I shall handle that indelicate matter as well. You might wish to collect those portkeys soon, son.  
I remain your loving Father,  
Lucius Gaius Malfoy_

Draco managed not to curse, nor to let the swimming heat escape his eyes as he tore the garnet brooch from what remained of his mother's robes. Snape gently removed the ring from her limp, bloodied hand.

"Let's go," Draco croaked. Snape caught his shoulder and nodded at Draco's wand, still point-deep in Narcissa's left eye. He swallowed. Then the bloody writing began to smoke threateningly, and suddenly it wasn't hard at all to draw the length of wood free. He wiped the gore on her shredded robes as his father's missive caught into a hundred tongues of fire.

It was only the fatty, reeking smoke that made his eyes water.

~*~

Hestia Jones apparated directly into the farmhouse's kitchen. Nobody in the silent building jumped at the crack, though Lupin, dozing over the opened medical kit beside Emmaline Vance's cot, did snort awake. Five pairs of eyes turned to regard the young witch with gloomy expectancy.

"It's true," she said, and again surprised no one. Hagrid stirred to offer her a mug of tea as she shook her drenched cloak off and hung it to sizzle beside the fire. "Molly says he never came home from work Tuesday night, and nobody's been able to find Diggs or Tonks since then either." She took a deep drink as the weary grumbles edged about the room. "And there's more. Arthur was transporting some paperwork when he disappeared. And Shacklebolt's just turned up in St. Mungo's. _Cruciatus_ torture... he was found in Ron Weasley's barracks room."

"Dear Merlin, no," breathed Vance in the voice of a ghost.

"Those rat bastards!" Moody gritted, "With the assistant Minister and a metamorph under their control there's no telling what they could do!"

"I think they've begun to do it already, actually," Jones sighed, dropping onto the hearth beside Lupin, "Louis at the café didn't want to let me use the floo when he found out I was firecalling England, and two Gendarmes followed me all the way to the edge of town when I left. I don't know if we'll be safe getting supplies in Arras anymore."

Hagrid burst noisily into tears.

"Look, everyone," Lupin put in, game, though exhausted, "We can't do this -- we can't lose our grip and let him slip away after all we've done. That's just what he wants us to do. Severus, Draco, am I right?"

"While it is true that Lucius would be hoping for a demoralizing effect," Snape drawled from his accustomed dark corner, fussily cleaning his nails with a knife, though he seemed to have forgotten about the blood caked over the right side of his face, "The fact is, I believe what he _wants_ is exactly what he's demanded. And if he cannot get Draco and myself back under his control -"

"No," Draco said from his perch on the stair's landing, staring down through the peeling banisters like a child spying on the adults' party, "Lucius wants _you_ under his control, Snape. Me, he just wants dead. And one way or another, he'll get it." They all looked up, and Draco stared back, knowing it was truth, knowing he was right. "My father didn't plan for me to live this long -- at least not outside Azkaban."

"Rubbish, boy," Moody huffed, cramming tobacco into his pipe, "Malfoy's not the sort to waste his bloodline like that-"

"He sent my mother to her death, _knowing_ it was a trap," Draco cried, "_planning_ for us to kill her -- for ME to kill her! Do you think he told her that he didn't expect her to return? Do you think he told her that the portkey she brought wasn't going to work for her?" Draco hiccoughed, restrained a sob and shook his head. "He killed her for the same reason he's going to kill me; jealousy."

And five pairs of eyes looked up at him in varying degrees of understanding. But he was through explaining. He knew it was true, in some vague, wordless understanding of the threat that lurked between those gory lines. He knew it was true, because mad or not, Draco knew his father. Lucius couldn't have another Death Eater carrying the immortal essence of his Dark Lord. He was just mad enough to believe that he could survive the parasite's rebirth and somehow be carried along into eternity with his undead Lord. That _had_ to be why Voldemort hadn't yet so much as tried to overcome either Snape's ward or Draco's own. A possession in his enemy's ranks would have been a devastating blow, unless Lucius was blocking it somehow. And Lucius would block it -- with every scrap of his will and guile, he would block it. Because Lucius would never truly believe his Lord would come back to him of his own will. Because when Lucius wanted to keep a thing, he always made certain it had no other place to go.

Snape, Lucius would need alive. Potions to slow the physical decay, potions to restore his magic and mind. And if any man stood a chance at creating a Philosopher's Stone in this day and age, it would be Snape. But Draco was merely one more warm body bearing a mark -- an open door to what was left of the Dark Lord. A door which Lucius wanted closed at any cost.

_And besides,_ Draco thought, scrubbing at his face with dry hands, _I know it's the end because Harry made me promise not to go. He demanded and he pleaded and he shouted at me until I said it. He must have known it would be the end._

"You will not meet him." Snape's level, bored tone actually shocked Draco out of his depression somewhat.

"What choice do we have?" Draco replied, "Either I go to him and spend my life to buy a little time, or tomorrow evening we read in the national news that Assistant Minister Arthur Weasley's walked into Beauxbatons and started murdering students one after another!"

"We are not paying danegeld!" Moody set the cups rattling with a fist to the table, "The moment we begin to meet his demands, there's no stopping the slide-"

"Wait," Lupin said quietly, blinking, "just how many are left after tonight?"

Nobody seemed to hear the man except Snape, who held up three fingers.

"But we can't just stand by and wait for Lucius to kill our people!" Jones was protesting, "Alastor, think what he could do with Tonks under _imperio_!"

"We'll just go an get 'em back off 'im," Hagrid declared, sniffing, "He carn't do nothin' if he en't got em!"

"Merlin, man, weren't you listening?" Draco shoved back from the banister to lean against the wall, legs braced before him, and throat tickling longingly after Moody's damned tobacco. "We can't rescue them if we don't know where they _are_ \-- not before he can use them to start his war! I _have to_ go to him!"

"You are **not** going to meet him, Draco," Snape said, rising menacingly from his chair. "I have the ring portkey, and you are not getting it away from me for any foolish act of pointless-

Across the room, Lupin scrambled unsteadily to his feet and with wand in bandaged hand, bolted into the farmhouse's kitchen. For a moment, that silenced everyone.

"What's his trouble?" Jones wondered.

"Full moon tonight, innit," Hagrid sniffled over the sound of clattering in the kitchen cupboards, "Poor man's most likely indisposed."

But at that moment, Lupin reappeared in the doorway, waxen and leaning, but with a smile creasing his scars. "We're not giving in to him. We're rescuing them, we're doing it tonight, and we haven't a moment to lose! No time," he shouted over the clamour of questions, "Severus, we have the basic ingredients for a simple floo powder, I just checked. How long would it take you to make some?"

Snape did not turn from his station at the foot of the stairs, nor did his glare at Draco falter. "Twenty minutes, if the cauldron is already clean, forty if I must boil the water."

"Excellent! Moody, have you ever jerry rigged an unopened floo connection before?"

The old auror's face spread into a mischievous grin. "Now that would be illegal, wouldn't it, young master Lupin? Of course I _do_ know how it's done in _theory_."

"Then bring your theory in here, man! The kitchen fireplace has never been flooed, so it'll be untraceable if we can get it open."

"I can help," Jones said, rising.

Lupin waved her back at her seat. "No, you go with Hagrid. Apparate to Beauxbatons, and get the Headmistress warned of the basics -- that Death Eaters could target the school using British wizards under _imperio_. She'll know who else to get the word to, and she won't wait on our permission to do it. And then find out if she'll lend us about six thestrals as well."

"Six thestrals?" Jones wondered even as Hagrid thundered across the room to collect his massive moleskin coat and pink umbrella from beside the front door.

"Later," Lupin waved her away, "I'll explain later -- for now, just go! And don't let her get involved herself."

"No fear a tha'," Hagrid nodded succinctly, yanking open the door while Jones struggled into her still-wet cloak, "I'll no have Olympe catching Malfoy's eye, meanin' no offense to young master Draco a' course. She'll stay well out of it!"

"And what," Snape asked as the door closed behind the pair, "would you like Draco to do, Lupin?"

Draco stared at his mentor, seeing through the blatant bid for make-work, for a leash to keep him under that watchful black eye. The werewolf, however, replied without pausing to think. "You go through the maps. Pull out any property your father or any of the others own within a single apparation's distance from Arras. If Hestia's right, they've been there, so that's the best place to begin."

"What if they used portkeys," he asked sullenly, but still got to his feet. "Or floo?"

"Floo can be traced, and they have to call their destination," Lupin shook his head as Draco descended. "And illegal portkeys can be traced to their maker if they're found by the law. Lucius may be mad as a hatter, but he's never been stupid. Apparation is the most secure way he has of getting them around. So we start there." And then he disappeared into the kitchen and Snape, after giving Draco a long, hard look, followed him.

Draco sighed. The preparations were pointless against a Seer's predictions, and with those green eyes, and that softly urgent voice, could Harry be anything less? Lucius' newfound madness held a genius in it of which Draco was just beginning to get the scope. Anyone who could sleep with a woman for over twenty years, get a child with her, make fortunes with her, and then in the end turn her into no more than a scrap of parchment... That was a man with the imagination to do anything, and not a single drop of humanity left to slow him down.

"Draco..." He jumped a little, and turned to the weak voice. Emmaline Vance, her once-lovely face still swollen and burned beneath its bandages, was raising her hand toward him. It trembled with the effort. "Draco don't give up," she said as he took hold, "Even if it seems hopeless, you have to keep trying."

"But why?" he asked, feeling very young, and very small.

She smiled, but perhaps it was a grimace of pain. "Because if you give up, then it can't get any better, can it? Luck needs something to work with if she's going to save our skins. We can't just lie here and wait for her." She gave his hand a weak squeeze. "The map case is under my cot. Why don't we talk about the properties while you work."

He snorted. "The blind leading the blind?"

Another grimace/smile. "What could be more lucky than that?"

And at that, Draco could only laugh. He nodded, returned her squeeze in case she couldn't feel the movement, then dropped to one knee and drew out the case. "All right then. The closest option is obviously Chateau Malréve, up the Scarpe toward Douai, but I think the Blacks once had a place over in Montreuil sur Mer..."

~*~

Snape whisked his wand through the gunmetal grey slurry, counting the precise strokes. At 65, it burst into cool white flames and the dross of the runny mess burned away. The flash of yellow smoke left the farmhouse kitchen smelling faintly of tuna fish.

"Phoo!" Moody turned, waving his hand in front of his nose, "Warn a fellow, won't you, Snape? 'Least you might have opened the window."

Ignoring what might have been sidelong toilet humour, Severus poked a gloved finger at the powder remaining in he bottom of the cauldron. There wasn't as much as he'd hoped. "The salt must have been old," he murmured, making a moue of his narrow lips as Lupin appeared at his elbow to peek. "No one will be able to travel on this."

"Won't need to," Lupin replied, leaning on the countertop and fiddling the bandages on his left hand, "If it can keep the floo open long enough to talk and to pass a couple of small personal items through, it'll be just what we need."

Severus turned to regard the barely-standing man narrowly. "How small, exactly?"

"A sock. Underwear perhaps," Lupin replied, "Nothing more."

Moody grunted, the sound oddly resonant in the brick and stone chimney. "Good plan. Your nose'll be able to track 'em down if they're nearby."

Snape made a rude sound. "And the fact that you can barely stand escapes your notice? Lupin, the moon will be full tonight-"

"You don't have to tell me," he growled, feral and touchy in the absence of the wolfsbane potion's soothing effects. Snape stepped back and Lupin abruptly remembered himself. "In six hours I'll have no trouble standing. Or running. Or tracking. And you said yourself that the wolfsbane's built up in my system. I haven't missed a dose in over five years."

Severus blinked, unsure whether to be flattered or horrified. "You place too much faith in that potion," he coughed as the rain freshened outside the windows, "But even if it does allow you to retain some vestige of your human mind, how will you cover all of the territory, let alone overcome the prisoners' guardians?"

Lupin merely looked into the cauldron full of green powder. "There'll be enough floo for two calls, won't there?"

"At least six, I should think, depending on distance and duration..." Severus began, then halted, feeling the blood squeeze angrily from his face. "You. My wolfsbane potion. No. You did not! You did NOT give my formula away to that wretched hack from Gévaudan!" He slammed his wand home into his sleeve, uncaring as the still-hot tip scraped his skin. "How DARE you use my work as a bargaining chip!"

"Why else did you think I needed you to write it down," Lupin snapped, "for my own entertainment? They're werewolves, Snape! Dark creatures can't afford to make allegiances on goodwill and the milk of human kindness! We wanted their help, I had to have something to trade for it!"

"But to trade-" Severus stopped, swallowed hard, hating that Lupin was right. From the fireplace, he could see the light glinting on Moody's eye as he stared unabashedly at them. "That was to be my pension."

Lupin had the gall to nod. "And with luck, you'll live long enough to spend it. The Gévaudan pack has been taking the potion since I contacted them and-"

"Impossible," Severus protested, "There hasn't been time to brew-"

"Time turner," Lupin cut him off, "their brewer has one, and he used it to try the formula -- YOUR formula, Severus! He nearly refused to try to make it until I told him the potion had been developed by Severus Snape. If it helps to know he's a fan of yours, there it is." He ran a shaky hand through his hair, which stuck up rampantly in the muggy gloom.

"The pack will find out tonight that your potion works, Snape," he said, eyes eerily gold in the half light of the rainy afternoon, "And in exchange for that freedom, Madame will owe me -- owe _you_ a favor. And if we are clever and bold and lucky, that favor will save Arthur, Dora, Daedalus and Draco's lives, and also keep you out of Lucius' clutches. And if it also averts the threat of a war and makes it possible for us to go the hell HOME next week, are you still going to sulk about it?"

Severus drew himself up straight, bristling with dignity and annoyance. "Yes," he said simply, and turned from the cauldron.

Lupin caught his sleeve. "Where are you going?"

Severus glared. "Out for a walk."

"In this rain? Why?"

"Suspicious, Lupin?" Severus jeered, and was both pleased and chagrined when the man's scarred face twisted darkly.

"Damn it, Snape, I'm _trying_! I'm trying to keep us all alive and to get us all home, and I don't want you to do something stupid before I can repay that bloody life debt I owe you, all right?"

Severus stared for a long moment, then, as Moody's snores began to echo from the chimney, he capitulated with a snort of resignation. "I am going out for a walk. I've a letter to post, and the weather will only deter onlookers."

"A letter?" Lupin glanced at Moody, then lowered his voice. "But you always go at night."

Snape gave him a scathing look and headed for the door. "I do _not_ go out on nights when I know there will be some dozen slavering, man-eating monsters abroad, Lupin," he said, and swept out of the kitchen. But he paused on the threshold to add, "And if you mean to _use_ any of that floo powder today, I suggest you wake that old fool up and get him back to work."

~*~

Severus did not find Draco with the maps in the living room. The maps were there, eight of them pinned to the wall and fluttering with stuck-on notes, but Draco was wholly absent. Vance, hearing him enter and halt, turned her head. "Professor?"

"Yes," he replied, "where has-"

"Draco went upstairs," her voice, thin though it was, still managed to carry wry amusement, "said he needed to send a message to someone. So I suppose since the floo's not working yet, he must be writing a letter up in his room so I won't read over his shoulder."

Severus swallowed, the throb in his head amplifying as his temper frayed. "A message."

"That's what he said," she paused, "are you all right?" But he was already halfway up the stairs by then and couldn't be bothered to call an answer back.

Severus threw open the door to the room he and Draco shared, and stopped short -- wordless as the last of his patience evaporated in a flash. His bed lay in shambles, mattress flung up against the wall, blanket, extra cloak and sheets wadded on the floor, pillow unslipped and being vigorously prodded in Draco's hands. "WHAT IN MERLIN'S NAME ARE YOU DOING?" He bellowed.

Draco jumped, but didn't drop the pillow. "The pensieve. Where is it? You kept saying it was under the bed, but I can't find-"

"UNDER YOUR BED, YOU JACKASS! IT'S YOUR BLOODY PENSIEVE!"

Draco blinked. "Oh." Then he did drop the pillow, and got up from his knees to go to his own bed, making no move to repair the damage to Severus'.

Severus took three deep breaths. A worried voice echoed up the stairs, and he turned, stuck his head back out to scream a polite suggestion that nobody concern themselves with any noises of murder for a short while. When he turned back around, Draco had the pensieve in his hands, and was drawing out his wand.

And that pierced through Severus' fury like a spear of ice. Because the pensieve was not empty, and at full size, Draco could not possibly overlook that fact. But Severus was as tired as the rest, and not even anger and alarm were enough to spur him across the attic garret in time. Draco tapped, and the pensieve gave its odd, warbling chime, its silvery contents throwing light across the pitched eaves like bright sun on water.

"What…" Draco took a step back as he drew near, the beginnings of outrage pinching his pale features. "What is this?"

Severus drew his weary back straight and peered down his nose. "When I told I would use the pensieve if you wouldn't, you surely did not imagine I spoke in jest, did you?"

Draco stared, his mouth working as his high cheeks stained with furious colour. "But you. This -- All these weeks, you-"

"Oh, leave off, you little fool!" Severus snapped, reaching for the bowl.

Draco jerked it out of his reach. "So you've been owling my lover all this time?" he shrilled, "Sending him -- what? Dirty little fantasies of doing him over your desk?"

Severus controlled himself with some difficulty. "I have been letting him know you're alive, jackass, since you could not be bothered to do so," he replied through his teeth, "Everything Potter has received in that bowl, he believes to have come from you." Draco's eyes narrowed, and Severus forced himself to shrug as though unconcerned, as though he were not desperate to snatch the incriminating silver threads from out of Draco's reach. "Do not imagine me as a rival, brat -- that is too ludicrous for both of us," he turned to begin re-assembling his bed, "I have done you a kindness, and him as well!"

"I would have done it," Draco's voice was mulish and confused, "only…"

"Only you never did," Severus replied, flinging the thin mattress down onto the ropes, "no matter how many times I put the wretched thing into your hands. Only now, with your precious skin feeling threatened do you ask for it -- what do you mean to leave him, Draco? A suicide note? A showy, self-indulgent exit line when all Potter asked of you all along has been to know that you lived, and that you thought of him?"

"I did!" Draco shouted, his angry colour returning. Severus tried not to let his relief show when the young man slung the pensieve aside onto his bed. "I mean I **do**! I do think of him, every damn day! Every time we hunt down and kill someone who knew me as a child, I think of Harry, and just why it is I'm doing all this!" Draco halted, took a deep breath and calmed himself forcibly. "I do think of him, Severus," he said as he dropped to sit on his bed, "and you know it!"

Severus sighed, dropped his bedding and went to join him. "Yes," he said, perching on Draco's bed and not even looking at the pensieve just out of his reach, "I know you think of him. And thanks to me, Potter knows it as well. You have nothing to fear from me -- I will not expose your neglect. In fact, you most likely have me to thank for it if Potter still holds feelings for you at all, you ungrateful little brat." He nudged Draco's foot with his own and finally nodded at the pensieve. "Now leave well enough alone, why don't you?"

It was a mistake Severus would not have made at any other time, but exhaustion and temper had done neatly away with his ingrained Slytherin subtlety. Draco's eyes narrowed, and Severus could only curse himself for a fool as the boy once more took the silver bowl up.

"First let me see it," he said, "I want to know what Harry's been getting all this time."

And what else could Severus do except spread his hands in surrender? Draco gave him another narrow glance, but when Severus crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the bedstead, the young man returned his attention to the pensieve.

_He will be unreasonable._ Severus told himself, slipping his wand from his sleeve as Draco's face lowered into the glimmer, _He will be jealous, and he will be livid. And you, old fool, will have some fast talking to manage._

But although Draco's breathing did quicken and hitch, and his hands did grip the rune-engraved lip fiercely, when he came up from the bowl only a few moments later, his face was pale with something other than fury. "You... you're right," he said in a thick voice, "I've never… told him." He took a deep breath and squeezed shut his eyes. "My stupid tongue -- I keep imagining Harry laughing at me, and I trip over anything I might have said, and. All the times I tried to write him from the Weasleys, I'd wind up with a pile of parchment a foot high before I have to quit, and-" at last he looked up, his eyes brightly pleading, though for what, Severus couldn't guess, "And I knew this wouldn't be any easier, because it wasn't the letters, it was just… me. I just kept hoping Harry _knew_ how I felt." He stared down at the glimmering bowl again, and his finger traced the rune for memory over and over. "I'm stupid," he said at last, "you don't have to tell me. I should have told him before this -- something more than that one stupid note."

Severus smirked, not quite ready yet to consider the danger passed. "Harry, I miss you, Draco. Yes, quite demonstrative, that."

"I know, damn it!" Draco cried, "I never told him how I really felt," and then those silver eyes sharpened, and Severus had just wit enough not to flinch as they turned on him. "But _you_ never told him either!"

"I?" he scoffed convincingly, he thought.

But Draco was not convinced. "You, Snape! You, finding a way to fool a pensieve into thinking this came from me. You sitting up here alone, filling that thing up with whatever you think Harry needs to believe. You're not doing that for me, you're doing it for him. Because you love him."

That time Severus did not manage to hide his flinch. "Stop," he said, glowering at the floor, "you're being ridiculous-"

"No, you stop it!" Draco snarled, "This pensieve -- I didn't just see what's in here, I _felt_ it!"

"And what do you imagine you feel?" Severus shoved himself up from the bed, unable to sit still any longer. "Lust, perhaps? Passion? Pity? Love? Do you imagine I cannot manufacture such _feelings_ at a whim?" he demanded, pacing the narrow room, "I spent nearly ten years faking loyalty and respect to a brilliant madman and a nearly peerless _legilimens_, Draco, I can fool a brainless magical device!"

"I know you can," Draco replied with a strange, mad calm, "I remember you pretending to like my father. But why would you need to fool a pensieve, when a simple news brief would have sufficed?" Setting the pensieve aside once more, Draco rose and stalked to intercept Snape's orbit. "You could have just dropped in your own memories of me these last weeks, and Harry would have had what he needed."

"If you think so," Severus snarled, "then you are doubly a fool!"

Draco ignored that. "But to go to all this trouble when not even I knew it. There's no reward for you in this, Snape, and in a Slytherin there is _nothing_ more suspicious than selflessness."

"Selfless -- Hah!" Severus barked a laugh and stepped around the young man. "We all have our hobbies, Draco. Each of us takes our distractions and our comforts where we may. Moody with his conspiracy theories, Lupin his chocolate, Jones' endless cleaning binges, Hagrid's making pets of those bloody ravens," he waved a hand at the dripping trees outside before spitefully adding, "and you have your endless self-abuse whenever you think I'm asleep or won't hear. Toying with the pensieve merely serves to amuse me. Nothing more."

"Nothing more?" Draco challenged.

Severus met it straight on. "Nothing."

The grey eyes narrowed as in triumph, and Severus steeled himself, but whatever it was he'd meant to say, a resonant chime cut it dead. Both of them jumped at the sound of the ward alarm, snatching out wands as they bolted for the door. Draco was closest, and got it open first. The downstairs rooms were a chaos of anxious voices and clattering feet. Severus and Draco added their own racket, racing down the wooden stairs for the landing.

They reached it just in time to see Lupin give a wordless shout and jump back from the window beside the door. But instead of seeking cover, he flung the door wide and bellowed. "What the devil are you doing here?!"

A white owl flew in through the open doorway, wing-sweeping Lupin's ear as she turned to seek a landing space. Severus felt his heart freeze. Then Harry himself appeared, grinning cheekily on the threshold, with rain-drenched hair curling around his face and green eyes dancing behind his glasses. Hooves made an echoing, restless noise on the flagstone portico as Harry reached out a hand and nudged the stunned werewolf's wand down from his breast.

"Hullo Remus," said the Boy Who Lived, "Can we come in?"

~*~

"You fool!" Severus hissed, too overcome to shout, " You utter, careless fool! We trusted you with his safety, with his security and his very _life_! How dare you betray us this way!"

The kneeling centaur glanced up at him to raise an eyebrow. "Betray _you_?" he snorted, then returned his attention to the business of unwinding the bandages over Emmaline Vance's face and shoulders. "The life we discuss does not belong to you, wizard."

"Then you have betrayed _him_!" Severus wanted to shout, wanted to rail and rant and throw things about, but he forced himself to be, if not calm, at least quiet. Because the _him_ in question was even now sitting on the floor across the room, holding Lupin's broken fingers between his hands and chanting that singsong nonsense Severus knew would haunt his dreams. Here. Harry was _here_, in solid flesh and bone and fragile green eyes and reckless, easy grace. And Draco hovered like a phantom at his elbow -- Draco, who _could_ touch, who by Merlin _should_ touch, should have those wide, brown shoulders in both hands and be bloody well _shaking_ sense into the damned boy... he could only stand there, silent and wistful, with his hands in his pockets.

_Send him away, you fool!_ he wanted to shout, at the centaur, at Draco, at everyone in the room. But to raise his voice would be to draw Harry's eyes, and that, Severus was not ready to dare. The merest glimpse of the damned, reckless fool was enough to twist his righteous fury into a thin, sad moan. "Firenze, how could you?"

The Chiron did not answer for a moment, focused solely on cutting and daubing away Vance's encrusted bandages. Then he looked up, shaking his golden mane out of his face and fixing Severus with a calm regard. "There is a time for hiding from one's destiny, Severus Snape. For Harry Potter, the time has come to go forth out of hiding and meet his, honest and unafraid," his lips quirked the tiniest amount, "That same time approaches for you."

Severus blinked, then made an extremely rude noise. "I have no bloody destiny," he sneered, forcing himself not to recoil from the faintly septic smell as the bandages hit the floor.

The centaur replied with an even wider smile and a swish of his tail. "Do you not? That is unlucky. Those who will not have a destiny, are most assuredly will had by it. But I see we will not agree upon that point," he shrugged one shoulder, a movement at once restrained and massive in the tiny chimney corner, then he spread his wide hands in the air above the wounded witch and closed his eyes. "Therefore I shall save my voice for my spells, and leave yours to whatever truth or falsehood you deem most important."

"Truth or-" Severus huffed, "How dare you!"

But the Chiron had already begun to sing, his voice a resonant, basso counterpoint to Harry's tenor. Severus could feel the magic winding tightly through the sound, and knew that his own sputtering voice concerned the healer no more than would the buzzing of a fly. The centaur's tail swished again, suggesting that perhaps it bothered him even less than that.

In the kitchen, Jones and Hagrid chattered like magpies while they enlarged and stowed the provisions Harry and Firenze had brought -- bread and meat, sugar and tea, milk and cheese and good English apples and soap and razors and the Daily bloody Prophet as well. All things they had done without and tried not to miss for weeks. A breath of home now that the hour had turned dark.

Moody and Lupin were arguing with quiet cheerfulness over Harry's head, either on the topic of maps, the weather, or possibly luncheon, he couldn't tell which. And Draco stood, limp handed and useless behind his lover's shoulder, neither able to leave him be, nor to find a way to be useful. He had not so much as touched Harry's face.

"Idiots," Severus contented himself with grumbling as he sought the comfort of his shadowy corner, "I am surrounded by idiots!"

Hedwig, dozing on the back of his favorite chair, made a sleepy noise that might have been either agreement, or complaint at the jostling. Severus chose to take it as the first, and bit deeply and disagreeably into an apple while he watched the scene across the room.

"There you are, Remus," Harry said, sitting back on his heels with a feline stretch, "Bob's your uncle. Leave the bandages on and try not to use it for another hour, all right?"

The werewolf grinned. "Harry, you're a wonder. Mind, I haven't forgiven you for frightening us like this, but-"

"I know, Remus," said the boy, patting Lupin's knee. Then he stood, and his face broke into a mischievous grin as he reached into his pocket. "Oh, almost forgot," he said, handing over a massive bar of chocolate, "Have some of this. It really helps."

Lupin barked a laugh. "You've been waiting years to say that to me, haven't you?"

"You've no idea." Harry beamed.

"And just how did you find us, anyway?" Moody cut in, his eye whirling spastically as he puffed on his pipe, "We're meant to be unplottable here."

"We asked the ravens," Harry replied. "They always notice when new people move into a neighborhood. It's the garbage they remember, mostly, unless you bring animals with you."

The old auror gave him a gobsmacked stare, then began muttering darkly about Hagrid's pets. Harry left him to it, managing to nudge Draco's elbow with his own as he turned. "It sounds like they're just about done with the sandwiches in there, Malfoy," he grinned over his shoulder as he headed toward the kitchen, "feel like fetching and carrying, since you're one of the few not bleeding?"

"Pott - Harry." Draco's hand at last made it out of his pocket, and he caught Harry's elbow, drew him up into the curve of the stairs.

"What?" Harry laughed, then his brow knit. "You're not, are you? Bleeding?"

"No, I'm…" Draco paused, splayed a hand against his left side, where Rastaban Lestrange had kicked him two weeks past. "My ribs are a bit -- but no, it's not that."

"What then?" Harry laughed, though Severus could see the concern unabated in his eyes, "don't tell me you're flinching at house elf work-!!"

Draco gathered him roughly in and kissed the rest of the feeble joke away. It wasn't much of a kiss -- stiff, startled and fearful, but it was the first thing Draco had done since the moment Harry had crossed the farmhouse threshold with which Severus wholeheartedly agreed. Harry made a soft, welcoming noise, tilted is head, and wound his arms gently up around Draco's back, slowing the kiss down, softening it, taking a gentle sort of command as he showed the brittle blonde how much more overwhelming pliancy could be.

Severus watched forgetting to chew -- forgetting to breathe while the two beautiful youths shared breath in the darkened nook. Then the kiss came to an end, and they came apart again -- the dark boy grinning like a hunting cat, the pale boy flushed and starting. Draco leaned in again, but Harry fended him off with a hand to his chest.

"Later," he promised, turning.

But Draco did not let him go. "Harry, why?" He asked in a voice rough and low, "Why the hell did you come here? Why now?"

_Yes,_ Severus thought, swallowing his mouthful and taking another bite of the fruit, _Why have you come to torment me tonight, of all nights?_

"I can't believe you have to ask me," Harry smoothed Draco's arms, as though gentling an agitated beast, "I couldn't stay away anymore, Draco. I just couldn't. And it's no good your getting angry at me, either, because it's your bloody fault!"

"How?" Draco demanded, "How is it my fault you're here and not safely in England? How the FUCK can that be my fault?"

"Shh…" Harry gently prised Draco's hands off his arms, and gathered them between his own in a clasp much like a prayer or oathtaking. "It was my choice to come. I'm not blaming you. I only meant the pensieve -- you put so much of yourself into it. That drew me here, like a moth to a candle flame. No, don't you dare laugh, you twit, or I won't give you the cigarettes I brought for you!"

Draco controlled himself with a sound very much like a sob. Very much like the sound currently trapped behind the half-chewed bite of apple in Severus' throat. Harry, not understanding, glanced nervously around the room before reaching up to tuck a stray lock behind Draco's ear. "Every day, your thoughts reached me, Draco. If I imagined that you loved me before you left England, those pensieves were the concrete proof of it," his voice shook with passion, and Draco turned his head aside from the heat of Harry's green eyes. Severus, however, wrapped safe and tight in his black robes and shadowed corner, stared fixedly and did not bother to hide his either his mortification or his longing.

"Every single memory was like drowning in you, Draco," Harry went on, unaware, as usual, of Severus' attentive regard, "It was like being with you all over again, but I couldn't touch you. Not for real. And with Severus' letters, and the scenes you showed me of what you and the rest were going through," his vague gesture took in the shabby farmhouse with its moth-eaten furniture, Vance's cot, the maps pinned to the walls, and the sheets draped over all the windows. "Draco -- How the hell could you expect me to stay safely in England and do nothing while you were all here starving in so many ways?"

"Every day?" Draco's voice was like a wounded thing.

Harry smiled. He knew what to do with wounded things of course, Severus realized. He released Draco's hands to thread his fingers into Draco's limp, pale hair and pull his lover's face down to his own. "Every," he paused for a gentle kiss, "single," another, placed with tender precision on Draco's quivering lips, "day."

Draco pulled away just enough to look over his shoulder. His grey eyes slicing through Severus' protective cover like knives. The apple, which had been tartly sweet and dripping with juice when Severus first bit into it, turned to sawdust on his tongue at the look. He set the apple aside, and swallowing, forced himself to meet Draco's eyes without flinching. _Give nothing away,_ he reminded himself as, without breaking eye contact, Draco shook loose of Harry and crossed the room in three quick strides. But his mind was too weary to be ready with words and defenses, and kept sliding into the stunned horror Harry's appearance had first invoked in him. _What is it about you that so disarms me, you horrible brat?_ He spared a thought to wonder as Draco stopped in front of the table and stared down with wide, strange eyes.

Snape stared back up, arms braced over his aching breast, legs crossed at the ankle before him. The image of ease being far more effective than any actual preparedness, he managed to find a hollow smirk in his armory, and pasted it onto his sore face as the silent moment stretched.

Malfoy curled a hand closed at his side. "Nothing more?" He breathed.

Severus made no reply, but allowed his smirk to deepen. Let the brat make of it what he would, Severus knew them both too well to fear exposure. Slytherins to the core, they were, and so some lengths of self-interest were safe to presume upon.

The fair brow clouded, then abruptly Draco whirled and beckoned Harry over. "Snape took a hit to the head this morning," Draco said as he drew near, "It was bleeding pretty fiercely when we got back here, and I know he hasn't had time to do more than wipe down since then."

"You haven't?" Harry stepped past his lover, and banished Severus' shadows with a gentle lumos.

"It is nothing," Severus growled as the young healer came around the table and brushed the stiff, blood-crusted hair out of his face, "Leave be."

"No, he's right," Harry fended Severus' hands off and carefully prodded the tender lump over his eyebrow, "This cut is deep, and it goes back into your scalp. Draco, why don't you-"

"I'll see if they need help in the kitchen," Draco's voice was stiffly correct, with just enough ease to skirt impoliteness. "Then I'll wait for you. To talk, all right?"

"You needn't-" Severus began, but found himself stopping at the ferocity in Draco's mercurial eyes. Here at last was the polar resolve which had made Lucius such a force to reckon in years past. Uncertain once more, Severus found himself unready to test the resolve in that young, savagely neutral face.

"It's the top room," Draco told Harry as he drew another chair close to Severus', "Whenever you're through with him." And then he turned and strode into the kitchen, and Harry, blind fool that he was, didn't even look after him.

"God, Snape," Harry smiled, reaching for his glimmering wand, "how have you managed to live this long when you-"

"I am quite well, you little fool," Severus leaned back from the soft fingers questing along his jaw, but the blasted owl behind him muttered a threat and shoved back. "Can't you tell he wants to talk to you now?"

But Harry merely turned Severus face to the light, tilting it back and forth with gently inexorable fingers. "He knows I need to do this first," the maddening brat replied, "And he knows I'm not going anywhere. We'll talk later. For right now, I'm more worried about you."

Severus closed his eyes. "You oughtn't to. This is just a bump. I've had worse-"

"I know, and recently too." Harry's thumb brushed the hinge of his jaw, a teasing caress which meant nothing more than a smile or a nudge, but which tripped Severus' breath none the less. "You know, _other_ people sleep when they're tired, and eat when they're hungry. But that's why there will only ever be one Severus Snape, I suppose -- nobody else could survive on sarcasm, stubbornness and spite."

_Surviving._ Severus' inner demons mocked as Harry's warm hands came away, _Is that what you call it?_

"You're worn out, Sir. You need rest, and you need healing." Harry's voice had a strange tone; formal without strain, solid and gravid with something Severus almost imagined as respect. He opened his eye to find the illusion borne out in a steady gaze and half-smile. "May I please heal you?"

"You," he swallowed, "You haven't asked anyone else's permission."

"Nobody else is you." Harry nodded. Severus found himself nodding back, and in a single, fluid movement, Harry stood and rounded his chair. "I wanted to thank you for the letters, by the way," he said, placing both quick, solid hands on Severus' shoulders. "I'd have gone mad with nothing but the pensieve to go on all these weeks. It meant a lot that you, of all people, would trust me enough to tell me what was happening."

"Yes, and your presence here proves that trust unfounded, doesn't it?" He grumbled, but didn't manage to stop himself leaning his head back against Harry's firm stomach when urged to do so.

The stomach fluttered a silent laugh, and the hands gave a gentle squeeze. "It was time, Sir, it was just time. I also wanted to thank you for taking care of Draco all this time. I have a feeling he wouldn't have made it if not for you."

Which was true, after all, but Severus cracked an eye to glare. "I didn't do it for _your_ sake, Potter."

To which the young healer only smiled that maddening, angelic smile and began to sing the darkness into soft, comforting shapes around Severus' weary bones.

~*~

Harry waited until Snape was asleep; harsh face lax, breathing deep and even through the grand cathedral of that nose, then he slipped into the kitchen for a damp rag and knelt to properly clean the man's face. He knew he might have done it earlier, but some instinct had told him that Snape's ferocious pride wouldn't stand for such familiar treatment. Odd though it was, Harry found himself unwilling to shake their tenuous friendship with the sort of disrespect he'd always afforded the man back when he'd been his Potions Master.

He bathed the blood and dirt away, humming under his breath to keep up the spell. The bruises and wear underneath the grime faded almost as fast, and Harry felt again the simple joy of putting something _right_ in the world. It wasn't a skill he'd ever thought to have, healing. He'd been raised to believe that his fate lay in combat -- in murder and destruction, fused to Voldemort's evil through the scar on his face and the prophecies the Seers couldn't seem to quit making about him. And when Harry had faced Voldemort at Dumbledore's side, when he'd done his best to murder, though everything in him cried out at the sheer _wrongness_ of it, his one comfort had been in the thought that with the killing, he himself would be finished.

Harry gave a laugh at his own naïveté, smoothing Severus' lank hair back out of his way. He had Lived, of course. It was what he did, after all, and nobody in the world was prepared to let him forget it, no matter how many times he pointed out that other people had lived too, and they had fought as hard as he.

He ran the cloth along Severus' lips, humming away dry splits and chewed patches until Snape frowned and twitched as if he would sneeze. "You actually do have lips when you forget to scowl, don't you?" he murmured, wiping a bit of apple juice from Snape's chin with the rag.

Then Snape made an odd little noise in his throat, and…snuggled into Harry's palm. A startled laugh caught in Harry's throat, but he pressed back all the same, supporting Snape's head as the hair -- quite filthy, really, but everyone here was -- slipped through his fingers. Snape made that funny, childlike noise again, and almost smiled.

"Huh. Good thing you're asleep, or that'd surely strain something." Harry murmured fondly to the sleeping wizard. "And if you woke up just now, you'd chew my arm off, wouldn't you? You'll try and send me off for a snog with Draco rather than suffer through this, though you were nearly too tired to stand earlier. You always have been a mystery though, haven't you? I still don't know why you stopped hating me, why you helped me all those times, why you let me become your friend..." Harry traced the curve of Snape's bottom lip, and smiled at the twitch. "And yet out of every friend I have here, you're the one I'm most worried about -- and the only one I'm scared to call a friend to his face."

The kitchen door opened just then, and Hagrid and Hestia Jones brought in sandwiches and pumpkin juice and gossip and good cheer which Harry had sorely missed these weeks past. Lupin and Moody called him over to the table and would not be denied, begrudging him even the time he took to cast a cushioning charm and ease Snape into it like a hammock.

Harry might have chalked it up to the unspoken trust between them that the man didn't so much as twitch at the change in his situation, but really, it was much more likely that exhaustion was to blame.

~*~

He was tired when he climbed the stairs an hour later -- nothing like the bone-grinding weariness he'd sensed in all the others when they'd arrived, of course -- this was simply the satisfied tingle of a day spent in rewarding work. It bore a promise of good rest underneath the passing stiffness, and a measurable result still visible on the other side of sleep. His magic felt stretched, but not drained as after a battle, leaving him hungry and sleepy and faintly horny. Quidditch practice was the only thing that used to make Harry feel like that.

Before he learned to heal, that is.

And before Draco.

Harry tapped on the attic door, which nudged open under his knuckle. Evening's gloom was finally eclipsing the grim storm-light of the daylong rain, and the long, narrow room was lit only by candlelight and a faint blue glow through the west-facing window. Early training made him scan the room for trouble before stepping across the threshold, but the room held only a pair of beds, a couple of trunks, a desk, a chair, a pensieve, and Draco, who lay face-first therein. Harry smiled at the sight.

The candle threaded rich gold through the pale glimmer of his hair, and gilded the planes of his neck, shoulders, the hands which fluttered restlessly over the bowl's carved rim. He might have been carved from the metal, but for the restless hands, and the shifting shadows across his robes which betrayed his rapid, shallow breaths. _Yeah,_ Harry thought with a grin, slipping his robe and shoes off, _Watching your pensieve has that effect on me too._

His cock gave an interested twitch as he crossed to lay his hands on Draco's taut shoulders. "Merlin, you're shaking." He pulled his lover's head up out of the bowl, worried now. "Draco, what's wrong? Are you hurt? You said your ribs-"

"Harry," the broken sound stopped him, and he dropped to his knees beside Draco's chair. His face was wet, and his eyes, focused on the candle, looked somehow shattered.

"I'm here," he whispered, catching Draco's chin and forcing his gaze away from the candle, "Right here." He pulled Draco's lax arms around himself and leaned fiercely in, clutching until the hug was returned. "Not going anywhere"

Draco made another ragged sound, and turned his face into Harry's neck. "Why? Damn it, why?"

_Why am I staying? Oh -- why am I here._ Harry rolled his eyes and gave in to the urge to shake his lover. "Hey! You're not making me feel very welcome here, you know?" He started on Draco's buttons until his hands were caught and held tight.

"You shouldn't be here! You should be down-"

"Malfoy," Harry growled, "Shut up. I know you wanted to wrap me up in eiderdown and stick me in a Gringotts vault, but that isn't bloody well happening, okay? I'm here now, and I'm not going to go away just because you think I should, all right?" He got up from his knees and yanked his tunic up over his head. "I'm here. I'm staying. Now do me a favor, and pretend you're something like glad about it, okay?"

"But-" Draco began.

"If you tell me I shouldn't be here one more time, Draco Malfoy, I swear I will break that pensieve over your head! And then I'll heal you and do it again until you get the damn message!" He thumbed open the buttons of his fly, hauling his trousers and braes down over his swelling cock, then kicking the lot aside. Draco's eyes widened, flatteringly transfixed, and Harry couldn't help a slow burn of pride in his stomach. "Now I don't know who _you've_ been shagging these past few weeks, but I've had to make do with _that_," he pointed at the pensieve, "and my own hand, and I am ready to shag you right through those trousers if you don't hurry up and get them off!"

That broke the spell, and though Harry's cock was a little sad to lose such a focused regard, the disappointment was more than made up by the sudden expanse of creamy skin Draco exposed to him. The shirt dragged over his head, revealing shadow-striped ribs that were... yes, when Harry squinted, he could see the bruise there. But before he could get distracted, Draco was squirming out of his trousers. His cock, purple with blood and already slick at the head, stood high over his bollocks, seeming to beckon as it twitched with Draco's rapid, almost-pained breaths.

"God," Harry breathed as his own cock gave a needy throb, "look at you..."

"Yes," Draco's eyes sharpened, "Yes. Look at me. See me -- see ME!" He stalked forward, three prowling steps that rolled his balls between his thighs, and stole Harry's breath clean away. Then he grabbed Harry into a fierce, plundering kiss, crushing their bodies together so tightly that even their strained breaths had no choice but to synchronize. And Harry, who was just wound up enough to take delight in the ferocity, gripped back, thrust his tongue and his hips into Draco's slick, desperate heat, and loved it.

"God, I've wanted this," he gasped when Draco broke their kiss to walk him backward toward the narrow bed.

"No," Draco said, shoving Harry down onto the thin mattress, "Don't tell me, I don't want to hear it." He slithered onto the bed, straddling Harry's legs and pinning his shoulders flat as he leaned in to growl in his ear. "Show me what you've wanted, Harry. Show me -- and don't look away."

And Harry, seeing no need to be asked twice, grabbed Draco's narrow hips and hauled him upward until his knees prodded into his armpits and his velvety bollocks dragged low across his chest. Then he groped a double handful of that taut arse and used it to bring Draco's cock as far into his throat as he could manage.

This time Draco's broken noise was just right. He clutched one hand in Harry's hair, which only made Harry suck the harder, refusing to gag as the soft head nudged the back of his throat. He pushed his fingers into Draco's heat, too eager to be gentle, too desperate to be shy about searching for the delicate entrance. Draco's ragged gulping sounded like pain, and Harry almost stopped, but the next second, Draco was thrusting hard, back onto the fingers, though the flesh caught and dragged, then forward into the depths of Harry's mouth, shattering Harry's groans into tiny pieces.

He felt the bollocks draw up, hard and tight against his sloppy chin, and he started swallowing, drinking in Draco's shout, the fisted hand yanking his hair, the shuddering, rippling of Draco's arse around his fingers as he came. It was everything. It was perfect, right down to the longing ache in his own bollocks, and the drips of precome cooling on his belly as his cock strained like a compass toward Draco.

Who gave him not one single moment of savour in his need.

Still gasping, Draco pulled his cock, which hadn't even gone soft yet, from Harry's mouth and squirmed free of his fingers. He dropped momentarily to plunge a hand under the pillows and steal a demanding kiss from Harry, who hadn't yet caught his own breath, but wasn't the least bit reluctant to find his tongue so engaged.

But even the kiss was brief. As soon as Draco located the bottle of lube, he tore himself away.

"Hey!" Harry protested, "You have a hot date waiting or something?" He snagged the bottle out of Draco's fingers and sat up.

"What? I just-"

"Oh, shut up," Harry kissed him, thumbing the cork out of the bottle and filling his palm with the cool slick, "Not talking, showing -- remember? It's just, could you act like you _want_ to be here?"

Draco's hand shot out, gripped his shoulder hard, and Harry looked up in alarm. *I do.* His lips moved, soundless and slow as his fingers gentled and slid upward, over the point of Harry's shoulder, up the ridge of his neck, down the collarbone, and then palm-smooth and hot over his chest. Harry's breath caught in his teeth as Draco's fingers staggered over his nipple, then his lover leaned close, pressed those words against that rosy, straining nub. Harry could read them like lightning traces against his skin. *I do.*

He let Draco guide his slippery hand down to his own hardness, let their fingers twine around him as he thrust helplessly into their shared grip. And true to his promise, he kept his eyes open, transfixed as the delicate golden creature tasted his sweat in tiny, fragile licks.

_Too much!_ Harry thought raggedly as Draco fastened on his nipple at last, _Been too long! Oh God, I can't!_

"Mmmmn," Draco agreed, though Harry hadn't thought he'd said it aloud. But he was moving already, parting their hands, holding Harry's cock upright and slithering astride his lap with a hungry purr. And then he was sheathed in slow-falling fire, tight and smooth and everything he'd remembered -- everything he'd dreamed about these long weeks past.

"Oh God…" Harry clutched Draco's hips and bit back the whine that filled his throat. He wanted so much to hold out, to make it last, to take all night long before he spilled himself, but the clasping heat was too much.

"Shh..." Draco soothed, brushing his fingers in maddening patterns over Harry's skin and locking his fevered gaze, "It's all right. Come now," he lifted his weight away, only to seat himself more deeply onto Harry's bucking hips. "Come, Harry. I want you to."

And pinned between his own thundering pulse and that lambent silver stare, Harry couldn't help but obey.

~*~

"You're not asleep."

Harry suppressed a smile as he felt Draco sigh, roll over and reach off the bed. "Well you're not either," came the reply as the cigarette package crinkled.

"Of course I am," he said without opening his eyes, "I'm far too sensible -- not to mention well-shagged -- to be lying here awake and worrying about whether Lupin's all right out there with that strange pack. Give me one of those, will you?"

The cigarette gave a crackle as it lit, and Draco blew out a smoky reply. "No."

"Why not? I brought them, after all."

Another draw, sounding smug in its crackle and singe, "Because you don't smoke, Potter. I've kissed you, so I'd know. And anyway, you're asleep."

Harry chuckled and walked his fingers along Draco's hip. "I can't help being asleep. Everyone with any sense is asleep -- even Snape, and he's more sensible than both of us put together."

"Debatable." Draco growled.

"Well, other than you, the only person on this farm still awake is Moody, and he's not suffering, seeing as how he kept falling asleep in his chair all day. Did you know he's under a curse?" Harry gave up pretending and opened his eyes. The brilliant moonlight splashed across the bed, throwing Draco's lean, graceful form into stark, cold relief. But Harry still had to force himself not to see the glow as a baleful, curse-laden glare.

"Narcolepsy," Draco replied, "We know. It was probably one of Lucius' curses."

"Really? Seems a little tame for him, doesn't it?"

Draco sighed. "Yes, actually. But since no one's been able to break it yet, and most of the other Death Eaters are dead now, the possibilities are rather limited."

Harry took note of the sudden gravity which the mention of Draco's father brought to his face, but let it go without comment, only rolling over to drape one arm across the moon-silvered chest. "Hm. Well, I'll ask Bill to take a look at him when he gets here."

"Bill?" Draco tensed.

"Weasley," Harry raised his head to look at him, "Arthur's eldest son. You didn't think they would sit by and do nothing to save him, did you?" Something odd flickered across Draco's face, as though he actually _had_ thought that, but didn't want to say. Harry frowned. "It was all I could do to talk them all out of coming over here with us. The twins showed up with trunks all packed."

"What about the W -- I mean Ron?" Draco corrected himself just in time, "I'd have thought you'd bring him along if it was a rescue mission."

Harry looked away, fighting the urge to clench his jaw. "They're holding Ron until Shacklebolt wakes up and can clear him. The whole family's under surveillance, in fact, seeing as how Arthur disappeared with an important attaché case. Bill's managing to come because Gringotts' has a branch in Lille, and there's legitimate work." He stole the diminishing cigarette from Draco's lips and filled his mouth with the bitter smoke to scald away the words.

"Yes," Draco said softly, taking his smoke back, "That's how he thinks; how best to hit where you're weak, how to use everyone you love against you. That's always been the Malfoy strategy. We're terribly good at it."

Harry scowled. "Don't," he spat, and the word made a white cloud in the moonlight.

"It's true. It's what I am. The fruit doesn't fall far from the tree, you know." He braced himself up onto his elbows, eyes dark and strange. "You think you know who I am, Harry? You think you know me?"

"I know you well enough to love you," Harry replied, trying to sound as certain as he had felt that morning -- as sure as he'd been when he'd walked across the threshold and seen Draco hovering on the landing like a weary angel, Snape a towering cloud of dark and stark white behind him.

"Why?" Draco demanded, and the manic tone crept back into his voice. "Why would you love me, Harry? Why me?"

"Because of who you are," Harry soothed, reaching to touch his face.

But he flinched back, caught Harry's hand in a fierce grip. "But you don't know," he insisted, "You can't know who I am -- not really. You think you know who I am when we've shagged all of once?"

Harry smirked -- nettled, but refusing to show it. "Twice now."

"Fine! We've shagged twice, and hated each other for the nine years before that," Draco thrust Harry's hand away and sat up, cigarette lighting his scowl an angry orange. "You don't know me -- you can't love me!"

"Do you think I'd be here if all we had was that night in the Three Broomsticks?" Harry challenged, "Think I'd have come all the way to bloody France over a one-off? I have had them before you, y'know, and there hasn't been a shag so good it's changed my life yet, not even you, and thank you for implying I'm that shallow, by the way!"

"But you-"

"I've been watching your _heart_ this three weeks, you idiot!" Harry shouted, scrambling from the bed to stalk, naked and furious across the room to the desk, where the full pensieve glimmered. "It's all been here, day after day; everything I might have needed to know about you -- to _love_ about you. Did you think I wouldn't understand it?" As Harry trailed his fingers through the silver glow, he felt the anger draining away into remembrance. The love that had drawn him here returned gently to its nest, wings fluttering like a snitch under his breast. "Did you think I'd be able to experience this, and be unmoved? Draco, you made me love you more deeply than I thought it was possible to love anyone."

Harry heard the ropes of the bed creak, heard Draco's footsteps crossing the attic. They stopped behind him, but he kept his eyes fixed on the pensieve and the trailing threads of silver that skated like serpents through his fingers. "I'm here because you loved me, Draco," he said to the cold, trembling hands that slipped onto his shoulders. "Because you loved me so much it redefined the word. It's your own fault I'm a big romantic sop now."

Draco's arms circled around him in wordless apology, and Harry leaned back into the embrace, smiling to feel his lover's lips against his ear, stirring the air in a whisper almost too faint to feel. "Merlin's grace, Harry. Please don't."

Harry folded his hands over Draco's, laced their fingers together and craned his head to catch those soft lips in a kiss. "Let's go back to bed," he whispered eventually, "and I'll prove it to you again."

"It's okay," Draco walked them back to the rumpled bed in a tangle of odd-sized legs and absent balance, "I believe you."

~*~

"Merlin help me! Professor Snape, please have mercy!"

"Be still," Severus admonished, offering a rare smile of pleasure as the kittens marched widdershins around the struggling woman, their tiny grinning heads tipping side to side like clockwork. "Mustn't miss their clever little song."

_"We are kitties, we are cute! Fuzzy, soft, hungry to boot!  
We are kitties, we are small! You're enough to feed us all!"_

Their voices were high and childlike, purring on the r's and spitting the plosives as their sharp little claws ticked out the time against the polished stone floor. Unnoticed, a pair of rats tangoed in the corner, pausing to snicker as the toadlike woman began to blubber loudly.

_"We are kitties, we are nice! We don't want your nasty mice!  
We are kitties, we are sweet! Umbridge is our favorite meat!"_

A black kitten with a pink bow stropped a carving blade, singing a counterpoint of: _"You must not tell lies, bitch!"_ in time to his work.

Severus heartily approved.

Then the farmhouse's proximity alarm chimed in a different key to the song, and shattered the best dream Severus'd had in a decade with a discordant wail.

He struggled upright, instantly alert, and promptly tumbled out of the cushioning charms. The worn wooden floor met his knees with no welcome whatsoever, and Severus barely stifled a groan as he rolled to his feet. _What the devil were you doing sleeping in the main room, you old fool?_ He grumbled silently, glaring at the suspiciously quiescent figures; Vance on her cot, Firenze sleeping on the floor beside her, equine legs folded beneath him while his human body leaned along the edge of her makeshift bed. Neither _seemed_ to be smirking…

The ward alarm chimed again, chasing out all thoughts of scratchy skin from slept-in clothes, and who might have seen him bruising his knees and dignity. Battle ready in a cold-sweat flash, Severus whisked his wand from his sleeve and started for the door.

"That'll be Lupin returning," Vance murmured, sleepy, but steady-voiced from her corner. Beside her, the centaur snorted in his sleep and twitched his tail.

"Or else it'll be Lucius Malfoy, coming to end this charade in person," Severus countered, "Who's on sentry duty?"

"It's Moody," Jones called from the landing, barefoot and pulling on her robes as she decended, "though who knows if he's awake enough to challenge."

"Ee is," Hagrid's voice filled the room as fully as his heavy tread filled the stairs. "I saw 'im from my winder, climbin' down from the tower. But the mist is too heavy to see who it is tha's comin'."

The alarm chimed one last time as Firenze awoke with a snort and a shiver. "There is trouble?" He asked, clattering to his feet.

With the tip of his wand, Severus moved the curtain beside the door just enough to peer out. "I shouldn't be surprised," he said. Someone moved close, made as if to peer over his shoulder, and Snape shoved them back with a snarl. "Leave off! I shall tell you when there is anything to see!"

For the mist curled thick and white around the chestnut trees, full of ghosts and shadows in the silvery pre-dawn gloom. Such a mist as might have held an army of Death Eaters, a spectral parade of trooping Fey or a thousand damned and hungry souls. Or it might swirl open to reveal three weary, grinning werewolves -- two bitches in leather and fur supporting one dog in patched tweed robes between them. Severus sighed, wand hand dropping as the tense knot in his stomach uncoiled.

"It is them," he said, and the tone of his voice told the anxious warriors just which 'them' he meant. Hagrid gave a raucous whoop, and Jones a startled squeak as he hugged her. Severus wrenched open the door and made good his escape lest the half-giant's enthusiasm turn his way.

Across the yard, Moody was taking Lupin from the other two -- drawing the man's arm across his neck and shouldering under. All were grinning. The taller witch had a wild mane of black hair curling riotously over her pale, shaggy cloak. She kissed Lupin on both cheeks, and he managed to bow over her hand in response.

_ Gévaudan _ Severus decided as the slight woman inclined her head like a queen. The taller of the two, tawny and thin, eyed Severus warily as he approached. He took the hint and hung back at the verge of the trees, seeing no reason to antagonize dark creatures any more than strictly necessary, even if they _did_ technically owe him a wizard's debt.

But he did not have long to wait. As the other Order members came charging across the farmyard with all the subtlety of rampaging wyverns, the werewolves from Gévaudan faded back into the mist on silent, soft-shod feet. Watching them go, Severus wondered idly why he should care that he would most likely never see a hair of them again.

And then the rest pounded past him, waking the sleepy crows with their shouts for news -- for once incautious of watching eyes or listening ears. Even Vance had managed to come out, mounted and clinging to Firenze's back as she blindly tracked the laughing chaos. Severus frowned at the eastern sky, just barely approaching the colour of pewter -- the mist could still conceal trouble, and would carry the sound all the farther. But then he gave himself a shake. _If there is trouble left after last night, then it will find whatever we do._

"We got them out safely," Lupin was saying as he finally drew near, "All three of them, and their wands as well."

"And they were all right?" Jones caught at his sleeve as Hagrid scooped Lupin up in his arms like a doll, "They hadn't been tortured, or-"

"I can't speak to that," he said, "Diggs broke his leg jumping from the window, but they were all physically sound to begin with. Tonks and Arthur were well enough that they'd both gotten started on their own escapes before we even breached the chateau. Tonks had one of her guards in a chokehold when we found her, and Arthur had most of the wards down on his cell even without a wand." Here, he shot Severus a weary grin over Hagrid's shoulder. "Looks like Lucius wasn't as good at recruiting as Voldemort was, to judge from this new crop of minions."

"Hah!" Moody slapped his thigh with a grin, "Through the wards without even a wand! I knew that boy Weasley was cleverer than he looked!"

"Not difficult, you must admit," Severus grumbled, but was ignored.

"Didn't they try to fight you?" Vance wondered, "I mean to escape from Death Eaters only to find a whole pack of werewolves…"

"There were a couple of tense moments, when we were driving them outside, but once they saw the thestrals waiting for them, they got the idea," Lupin yawned, jaw cracking. "By now, they're halfway across the channel, with all the evidence they need of their abduction."

"And the Death Eaters?" Severus pushed forward to ask, "Malfoy, Lestrange and Nott? What of them?"

Lupin's eyes flashed a feral echo of the wolf as he pulled a heavy, sodden satchel from under his robes. "That would be the evidence I mentioned," he said, handing the bag over to Moody, who opened it to reveal three pale, stiff, Marked forearms. "The rest of the remains went tied to the other thestrals. There should be plenty left to identify when they reach Ministry territory."

"Good lad," the old auror huffed even as Jones, Hagrid, and the centaur backed in shocked alarm, "Nothing left to chance now." The ravens, already interested in the human drama under their roosts, fluttered down to the lowest branches once the scent of blood escaped the bag. Hunched and muttering, they eyed the pale flesh with beady black speculation.

"You lot clear off now," Hagrid scolded, "This en't for you." But he was summarily ignored.

"Madame insisted," Lupin said apologetically as Firenze gave a fiercely disgusted snort, "and I have no rank in her pack, so I couldn't risk offending her by protesting. Then after moonset, they insisted the trophies were ours to keep, so…" he shrugged, distinctly uncomfortable with the remains of the night.

"Oh, stop being squeamish and let me see them," Severus said, pushing forward and snatching the bag. The flesh was clammy, the fingers stiff and damp as he drew each arm out to examine. "This was Nott's," he said, turning the back of the hand toward the light, "He smashed this middle finger in a Quidditch game sixth year. See the arthritis? It never healed straight." He laid it aside in the weeds and went on. "This could be Rastaban's. The Mark's a bit crooked there, and that ring is the same as the one Bellatrix wore."

"But this…" he lifted the last arm; slender-fingered, elegant even in death. "This was never attached to Lucius Malfoy." Severus raised his voice over the outcry, holding the grisly trophy aloft. "This is his wedding ring, yes, but there is no wear line, no paler skin underneath it. His signet is missing, and even so, the index finger ought to bear the marks of it, for he wore it often. And this Mark is different to the others; ink, not magic." Severus prodded the flesh with his wand tip then looked up into Lipin's horrified eyes. "Lucius escaped you."

"Fuck!"

"Dear Merlin, no!"

"Are ye sure? Truly sure?"

"I didn't see him go down," Lupin said, his voice as grey as his face, "The others caught him in the stables, and I didn't see -- didn't check the body…" he let his head drop back into the crook of Hagrid's arm and quietly cursed the shivering, silvery sky.

And for a moment, beyond that low, bitter voice and the fidgeting ravens, the morning was silent. Severus tossed the arm with the others, trying not to look at the raggedly gnawed ends too closely. Then a quiet step stirred the weeds behind him and he turned to find Harry approaching, face nearly as white as the mist.

"Where's Draco?" He asked.

And suddenly Severus knew. He didn't have to glance down at his left hand to see that Narcissa's ring no longer spanned his smallest finger. Nor did he wonder if it might have come off in the farmhouse when he fell, or if one of the others had taken it for safe-keeping while he slept. They had not. He knew.

"Inside, I reckon," Moody, who did _not_ know, answered, "that one never drags himself out of bed 'til his breakfast is ready, no matter the need."

"Did you check the kitchen, Harry?" Brown asked, catching on quicker, "maybe the bog?"

He shook his head, the mist-dampened curls bouncing around his cheeks. "No, I looked, there's no one. I thought he'd be out here when I heard you."

Firenze sniffed the air as Harry glanced up at him, but the centaur shook his head. "I catch no scent of him beyond what clings to you, colt," he said.

"Oh no," Vance murmured, her slender white hands curling over Firenze's shoulders, "You don't think he could have gone to-?

"No." Moody growled, "I was on watch, and he didnae pass me. Nobody passed all night -- I'll stake my good eye on it!"

But Harry's eyes had turned to Severus -- wide, pleading and filled with a knowing terror. Against those eyes his silence stood no chance. "No," Severus heard himself say, and was impressed at his even tone, "He did not pass your watch, Moody, but he is gone nonetheless. He took the portkey from me while I was spelled asleep. Draco has gone to keep his appointment with Lucius."

Harry stared at him as if he hadn't heard, as if he were waiting for the rest, because Severus couldn't possibly have said what he just did -- not and left it there, not after his promise. Severus met that gaze straight on, beyond guilt, beyond shame, laid bare in the hard green knowledge that when it came to this one, critical thing, he had failed Harry. Failed him utterly.

Ravens' voices echoed suddenly through the mist, distant but sharply raucous in excitement. Hagrid's tame death looked up with interest, then on an unseen signal all five of the birds leapt into the air in a thrashing of black wings and chestnut leaves.

_"It's dawn, heavy mist, so there's a river nearby. I can hear crows in the trees…_ Severus remembered Harry's words, and from the darkening of those green eyes, he knew Harry was doing the same.

When Harry bolted forward, mouth stretched in a sudden, wild howl of denial, Severus was the only one not surprised.

And he was the only one with the presence of mind to catch Harry when he bolted, and to stop him running after the black birds as they followed the cackling summons into the mist.

~*~

Harry cooked breakfast like a storm, rattling all his frustration and fear and lambent rage about the farmhouse's kitchen like a murderous house elf bent on feeding an army. Severus watched him from the doorway, arms braced across his aching chest, one cup of sweet, milky tea going tepid in his numb fingers.

_They know where they are going,_ he wanted to say, _They will get to him in time to stop it. They outnumber Lucius -- they will surround him, out-maneuver him, stop his duel before it is too late. They will save Draco. They will._ But he did not dare. The hollow assurances crumbled in his throat because he knew Lucius must be expecting a rescue. And he knew the sort of measures Lucius in his maddened genius would be ready to take against his soft-hearted enemies. And he could tell from the stalking-panther pace Harry set about the kitchen that _he_ knew it as well.

Not for all the comfort in the world would Severus add to the weight of his betrayal with such convenient lies.

The bacon grease gave a loud pop and splattered wide just as Harry moved the pan from the heat. Singed, he yelped and dropped it into the coals, which flared up hungrily after the sizzling meat and fat.

"Damn it!" Harry shouted, and had Severus not lunged across the kitchen, would have plunged his hand in after the pan. "Damn it, damn it, DAMN IT!" Harry bellowed, struggling as though glad of Severus' grip giving him something to fight. He kicked the ancient iron stove and screamed. "It should be ME, damn it! I should be there, not Draco! I should be facing Lucius and Voldemort, and-"

Severus yanked the boy around and gave him a vicious shake. "Stop!" He hissed, close and hot, "Stop this at once! Do you think He would not welcome the sight of you? Do you think He is not waiting for the slightest chance to use _that_," he nodded at the lightning scar, just visible through Harry's sweaty, tousled fringe, "to pry you open like a jewel box and step inside? Don't you realize he would rather have your body for his own than any of his most powerful or loyal followers?"

The green eyes closed, crushed, but accepting. Severus gave the boy another shake, then hauled him to the sink, where the pot of burn salve (mostly empty after Vance's injury) sat. "Do not imagine you are alone in chafing at this restriction," he offered, smearing the purple ointment over the angry red blistering Harry's hand and forearm, "I have sacrificed much to see things to this point, but my Mark renders me just as useless today as your scar does you."

"But you have the warding focus," Harry nodded at the device as Severus turned his hand over and smoothed the delicate skin of his wrist under two fingers.

"Hmph. I dare not trust it with Voldemort discorporate," he pushed Harry's sleeve back to look for more burns, "When I took the Mark, it was more...willingly than most initiates, and so its roots run deep in me, despite everything Dumbledore was able to do. When I was but one of a crowd and Voldemort's will dispersed amongst the many, then this bit of rock and wire was enough to block him. But should I ever come under his sole regard…" Severus shook his head, refusing to indulge in that morbid speculation. "The others can manage this, or else it cannot be managed," he said, "Your presence or mine would only add to the disaster."

Harry took a shaky breath and held it, staring down at the tiny circles Severus was still tracing on his arm. "Yeah," he nodded at last, "all right." Then he glanced up to catch Severus' gaze in a cheeky half-smile. "I could have taken care of this myself, by the way."

Blood heated Severus' chilled face, and he only just managed not to snatch his hands away. "I had heard the Chiron's magic did not work on the healer himself," he covered, pulling out his wand to levitate the scorched pan out of the fire, and the shattered green mug off the flagstone floor.

"Not for bad injuries, no," Harry agreed, fetching another mug from the shelf, "but little stuff like this is no trouble at all. Basically, for Fleshscaping, as long as you can maintain consciousness, you can manage."

"Fleshscaping?" Severus asked as Harry stirred milk and sugar into his tea.

"That's what the Chirons call healing of the body," he explained, pouring a second cup for himself as he slid Severus' across the rough table, "As opposed to Heartscaping or Soulscaping." Looking up in time to see Severus' blink of surprise, Harry smiled. "I know. It's an intimidating idea, that spiritual and emotional damage can be healed just like physical wounds can, isn't it?"

"Mm. And all that from a little singing." Severus smirked into his cup, savouring Harry's scowl as much as the bittersweet flavor on his tongue. "With your tin ear, one wonders how you manage."

"Ha ha. You're the soul of wit," the youth growled, "Think about it, Snape; grievous injuries don't just leave scars on the body -- the memory of the trauma can be as bad as the event itself." Harry warmed to his topic, and some of the tense fear left his eyes as he tried to illustrate the concept. "Normal wizarding spells can heal the bodily damage, but unless the spirit and mind are healed as well, the patient somehow remains damaged, unable to right themselves, and in many ways unable to remember what their lives were like without the pain they carry inside them. They may _appear_ whole and sound, but inside, they stay broken."

Severus sipped again, swallowing against that uncomfortable truth, and what it said about his own life. "And how, exactly, are these spiritual healings affected then?" He asked to distract himself, "Surely not more singing."

He was unprepared for Harry's sudden blush. "Well, er…" a shy green glance, "promise you won't laugh?"

"I shall promise no such thing," Severus sniffed, "I firmly reserve the right to mock the patently ridiculous. Now what is it -- silly dances by moonlight? Foolish wand waving and ritual trappings? Sex?"

Harry's blush deepened abruptly, but he boosted his chin stubbornly. "It can sometimes involve sex, yes."

Severus barked a laugh. "With centaurs? Potter, you amaze me! I don't know whether to be impressed, or disgusted!" Harry made a frustrated noise in his throat, snatched up an apple out of the bowl, and pitched it at the Potions Master's head.

Severus' long forgotten Keeper skills re-asserted themselves, and he caught the fruit before it bounced off his temple. He blocked up the rest of his laughter behind a large, crunching mouthful, then put up his palm in surrender as Harry reached for a second missile.

Mollified but still blushing, Harry explained. "I don't have to DO it with a centaur to get an idea of what's happening. I can get the principle down first, and -"

"So you like to watch then?" Severus couldn't help putting in.

"See now, this is why the Chirons don't take wizarding apprentices," Harry huffed, one foot bouncing in irritation, "You can make fun all you want, Professor, but learning Soulscaping has changed a lot for me. I see everything different to how I did before, written words, looks, even expressions," he looked up, eyes focused two floors farther on than the soot-darkened beams overhead. "That was why I _felt_ the love in those pensieves so strongly."

Severus very nearly choked on his apple.

"I heard Draco this morning, did you know?" Harry asked, still glaring upward, "I woke up when he left the bed, but he only went to the desk. He sat down with the pensieve, and I thought he was adding last night into it, so I…" his hand balled into an impotent, singed fist on the scarred tabletop as his voice dropped to a whisper, "So I went back to sleep. And when I woke up again, he was gone."

_He added to-!_ But Severus restrained his outburst just in time. It took more effort, as well as a bite of apple, to resist the urge to ask if _he_ could look. After a silent moment of chewing, he compromised, swallowing hard. "Have you examined it?" He asked mildly, "The pensieve, that is."

Harry sighed and shook his head, dropping his gaze at last. "No. I couldn't look. It's stupid, I know, just -- SHITE!" He lunged from the chair and snatched the smoking omlette off the fire. "Aunt Petunia would box my ears for this disaster," he grumbled, sliding the mess onto a plate. Then he laughed, a dry, hollow sound. "But then it's all been a disaster, hasn't it? Why would breakfast be any different? I know what's going to happen when Draco fights his father. I know that memory, or that thought, or that… whatever he put into the pensieve this morning is just up there… waiting." He drew in a great, shuddering breath, and blew it out. "I don't know if I can bear that it might be all that's left of the only real love I have ever had."

"If it's not too much trouble, Potter, do you think you might spare me the melodrama?" Severus put on one of his best smirks, preferring a petulant, angry Harry to this fragile youth before him. "Most likely, Draco will survive his encounter with Lucius. Horribly scarred, no doubt, because Lucius's sense of humour always did run to the grotesque, but he should still be relatively functional, if not so decorative as before."

"I hope you're right," Harry replied at once, gravid and straight-faced. "If that's what happens -- if he loses his looks, but survives, I'll count myself lucky. Do you think I love Draco for his face? For his body?" He shook his head and turned to stir the cauldron full of porridge -- the only unruined remnant of the meal, "I know you like to think I'm shallow, Snape, but you haven't seen what's been in those pensieves." Glad of the apple, Severus hid his impulse to smile behind another bite. Harry went on, unseeing as he stirred the bubbling mess. "You haven't felt Draco put into them -- the power of his emotions, it...shakes me. Nothing less could have brought me all this way. Not infatuation, and sure as hell not just sex!"

Not so inclined to smirk anymore, Severus watched Harry struggle with an emotion that seemed too big for his slight body to contain. He refused to name it, refused to call it love, no matter what the boy thought he-

"No," Harry shook his head, spread his hands in a sign of surrender. "I can't explain it, not unless you had felt this kind of love for yourself. Just trust me, Professor; it doesn't matter what Draco looks like. I love his soul."

Severus swallowed, set the apple core aside. He would have had a more ready response had Harry smashed the skilled over his head. "His soul?" Severus managed at last.

"His soul," Harry replied, rooted solid in his certainty, "And I always will."

And before his wit could save him -- before the perfect, sarcastic comeback could leap fully armed from his forehead to strike down the moment of dumbfounded vulnerability -- before he could damn himself with the truth, the whole of Severus Snape's world came to a howling end.

His left arm spasmed, cramping in sudden agony so fierce he didn't notice the mug shattering in his grip. His teeth locked hard, turning a yelp of agony into a snarl as the Mark burned like a coal under his skin. . The ward focus twisted tightly into his arm, chiming in distress as it tried to channel the massive onslaught. Staggering back from the table, he gripped the meager protection to his breast as his chair toppled.

"Potter. Harry. Run!" He managed, as inside his sleeve, clenched fast to his arm by nerveless fingers and biting wire, his wand gave a twist and a whine of protest. He gasped, stumbled against the doorframe. Under his right shoulder blade, Severus felt the bones softening, flesh twisting obscenely. but Harry wasn't running, he was coming forward, hands outstretched, eyes wide and concerned. _Dear Merlin, please no!_

"Go, damn you! Get away from me! NOW!" Severus fumbled his wand out of his sleeve and pointed it in a shaky hand. "Don't you understand, you little fool? They are BOTH DEAD!"

Harry stopped, "Both...? Draco's-" and for a second, those perfect green eyes closed. "Oh God, no." He whispered. But he didn't run. And a moment later, his Hero's mask was back in place, stubborn and valiant.

"I am the last one," Severus pleaded, wand smoking in his grip, "the last one Volde - Ah! Voldemort has and he…and HE IS COMING!"

Potter took a step. Just one, with his eyes flashing, with his jaw set, with his wand suddenly in one hand as the other stretched out for him. _I won't leave you._ that face said with a taut, determined glare, and Severus knew that once more he had failed. Only one thing would keep the wretched boy out of Voldemort's grasp.

"_Apparate!_" he shouted, and slashed his wand hissing through the air.__

"NO!" Potter shouted, and lunged.

The wand gave a wail of distress and shattered in Severus' grip, shards scattering wide as the spell wrenched Severus safely out of Harry's reach. But the ghost of reaching fingers still managed to brush icily across Severus' bleeding hand as the world tore away.


	5. Act Five

A note in Draco Malfoy's script, discovered later, on Severus Snape's bed:

_You Idiot.  
Tell him. Tell him everything.  
\-- Jackass._

~*~

From the private journal of Harry Potter.

_It takes four pensieves to hold his memories -- one for each week he was gone from me. I've watched them so many times, I could probably re-impress them into my own pensieve if I tried. Every detail is smooth and solid and carved into my heart. I breathed these memories, I ate them, I drank them and slept and dreamed them and all the while I thought of him._

And the last thing he tried to tell me was that I didn't know him. Not really.

And then there's this last pensieve. The one he left for me on the desk the morning he slipped away. It's almost empty. I took almost everything out of it, poured the sweetness and longing and desperation into the fourth pensieve there on the sideboard. But these last few memories... I'm sure these were the ones he put in that morning. They just don't fit with the others.

The first time I watched them, I hated him. Why would he show me that? Why would he want me to see him with those others? The Death Eaters -- good God, his father? Why did he want to leave me with that? Was I supposed to be turned on, watching him give himself to those men when he was taking himself away from me? Because yes, he is beautiful. The way his face flushes so bright across the cheeks and nose when he's penetrated, when he's...

When you're fucked, Draco -- is that what you want me to be thinking about it? When you're fucked so hard and on your knees with your eyes screwed up tight because it hurts but you're still begging for it. Was I supposed to make it hurt? Was I supposed to throw you against the wall like MacNair did, and leave my handprint around your throat? Call you whore and slut and slap your face like Flint did?

God, Draco.

I only wanted to love him, not defile him like that, and I can't believe he could have wanted that from me. He kissed me so hard the once, and he rushed me the next time, but we were never like that -- like this, cheap and low and sleazy. Not with me. So why did he need me to see him like this?

Or was he trying to show me something else? I can't tell. It's hard to look through the jealousy -- and God, do I ever feel jealous, every time I watch his lips close around someone else, or watch another man make him whimper and beg and come -- but I'm sure there's meant to be something else here. I watch him pay for boys in Cannes, and I watch him pick up dancers in Monaco, and even though I hate it, I think there has to be something else I'm meant to see. I can feel it.

Because he felt it. Something beyond his bitterness -- beyond the despair and sadness that cling in my throat when I make myself watch. He was hoping for something. I can feel a secret smile, like the kiss before dying that he never gave me. He never could resist playing games with me, and he always loved his games the more when they drove me crazy.

So I'm playing this last game, Malfoy. It's all I have left of you; this last memory-puzzle, and I'll solve it, even if it means you'll finally really be gone, and I'll be alone again.

I'll figure you out. In memory, even if nowhere else.

~*~

From his room at the top of the Three Broomsticks, Harry watched them gathering. Witches and Wizards in the very best of their robes, crowding into Hogsmeade's streets in a jostling herd. He did not for a moment fool himself that the turn out was actually to recognize the ground breaking for the Draconis School for the Healing Arts. Hogsmeade's town Governors were happy enough to find a portion of the fabulous Black and Malfoy fortunes invested in their own little economy, but these strangers pouring in from the length and breadth of Britain hadn't the slightest interest in another bloody school.

They were here to see him.

Because the news had been abuzz for the last month with rumours which, as usual, told less than half the truth.

When he'd returned with the rest of the Order to Britain, angry, weary, and heartsick at having failed to locate any trace of Severus, the papers had leapt upon his reappearance like vultures. "Death Eaters Destroyed!" the headlines had shouted, "Harry Potter and his crack team of aurors go underground on the Continent to settle You-Know-Who for good!" And the Ministry, as usual, had to scramble for their own plausible untruth to counter the lie which the public already wanted to believe. But the stories about a near brush with war persisted as Ministry representatives flooed frantically back and forth from London to Paris and Madrid, smoothing the waters as best they could.

Then, when the press got wind of the last-minute will Draco had filed with the French Ministry naming Harry as his sole heir, the speculation flew again. "Is Our Harry really a Potter?" That headline was the most direct and most insulting of the lot, and Harry hadn't even managed to read the accompanying story before burning the rag to ashes. Later, Hermione had told him that the reporter's pet theory was that Lucius Malfoy had raped Lily Potter during Voldemort's first reign, and that Harry's inheritance was the result of blood-tracking spells in the hands of the Goblins. She assured him that nobody with half a brain believed any such thing, but the end result remained that Harry now controlled the combined estates of Black, Malfoy, and Potter, making him the richest wizard in Britain. The society pages had no mercy whatsoever.

It was generally assumed that Malfoy Pere et Fils had murdered each other in France, in a duel over a woman. But then Harry hired solicitors to systematically sell off the massive family holdings and began to donate the proceeds to war orphans' charities and veterans associations. That was, apparently suspicious, and the press was heartily tired of Harry's continued refusal to appear in public or grant interviews. "What's On Harry Potter's Conscience?" Roared the next affront, hinting broadly that the Malfoys had met their end at Harry's own hand. (The solicitors had been swift on that one, and Harry had taken great satisfaction in firing that editor and reporter from his newspaper the very next week.)

Providing for Draco's children and their mothers was a bit easier because of that though. Once the solicitors discovered the women's names, each one was approached quietly with an offer -- a house that had belonged to Draco, a generous allowance from the estate for the mother, and a very comfortable inheritance held in trust for each child. One lady was almost offended by the offer, and another did her best to bargain for more, but in the end all three settled into contracts that very much resembled Harry's original offer. Of course the press assumed the children as well as the mistresses were his, and indulged their sense of fantasy when describing the 'queenly style' in which the lucky ladies found themselves, but considering how much worse it might have been, Harry couldn't really bring himself to care.

After all, nobody connected him to Dolores Umbridge's sudden withdrawal from all political activities, and when she hurriedly fled Hogsmeade and moved into the cover of a Fidelis charm, no one seemed to make the connection to her upcoming interview with Witch Weekly on her time as an educator to the Boy Who Lived.

And only the bravest of reporters mentioned the rumours that that You-Know-Who had chosen his successor, and that a new Dark Lord might soon be rising from the ashes of the Death Eaters. The one story which skirted closer to the truth than anything printed in the two months since his return from France, and Harry couldn't find a single reporter willing to put a single scrap of effort into following it down. It was enough to put him off newspapers for the rest of his life.

"It's all just rumour, Harry," Arthur had promised him, "Snape's been spotted, since we asked the French and Spanish aurors for their help in finding him, but that's all. Just spotted, and he's never attacked anyone. There haven't been any signs that he's trying to rebuild anything."

"Yet," Moody had thrown out, shattering whatever comfort Harry had been able to take.

"Let it go, Harry," Lupin had urged, "Not even Albus could find Snape when he didn't want to be found. Whatever's left of Voldemort after he hit Draco's spirit ward, Snape's obviously fighting it. He'll know what to do."

_Except he won't._ Harry ground his teeth, searching the teeming streets for a tall, stark slash of black though he knew it wouldn't be there, _I know what to do, but he doesn't, and I have to find him. He has to come to me before--_

The clock in the square tolled half eight, and Harry gave a sigh. It was nearly time to go. Ron and Hermione would be there soon, and he really ought to be getting his formal robes on. He glanced at the open wardrobe, where the black silk gleamed with emerald green where the light struck it. He had bought that set of robes for Draco's funeral, and come very close to burning them afterward. Now, though, the yards of midnight green offered a comforting shelter -- as though the colour would armor him against the stares and whispers, cloak him in a bit of the Forest's lingering, peaceful gloom.

He settled the robes over his shoulders, straightening into the weight with a sigh as he got started on the buttons. There were a lot of buttons on these robes. Ron had teased him a little about that, but Harry hadn't been able to explain it. The detail made him feel better a little -- the buttons pulling the heavy fabric tightly around him, like a dream of comforting arms and eyes that watched in his sleep. And even Ron -- poster child for the 'I like GIRLS, damn it!' club -- had to admit that the robes did incredible things for Harry's looks.

The colour brightened his eyes, mellowed his skin to look less weather-roughened. The cut solidified his still-slight figure, adding breadth to his shoulders and height to his body as no other outfit ever had. They made him look imposing, these robes, embroidered with Gryffindor lions across the breast and back, and knotwork like golden serpents all along the flowing hems. People hushed when Harry drew near in these robes, and today, he rather thought he'd need that sort of power.

Feet echoed on the stairs just as he pushed through the last button and tugged the snug garment straight. Ron's voice, followed by Hermione's. Harry spelled the door open before they even knocked, and smiled at Ron's startled yelp and Hermione's moue of annoyance. "You're early," he commented, tucking his wand back into his sleeve, "We're not expected until nine."

"We know, Harry," Hermione sniffed, settling her deep amber robes and her dignity with a shrug as Hedwig launched herself from her shoulder to fly to Harry's outstretched arm. "It's just there's news, and we thought you'd want to know."

_They've found him!_ Harry swallowed, then stroked Hedwig's snowy breast with one finger. "News?" he asked, as though his gut weren't knotted.

"It's Kingsley Shacklebolt," Ron grinned and didn't notice that Harry slumped just a little, "He's been released at last. The Healers at St. Mungo's said he should be able to go back to work in a few months. Dad's put him in for another Order of Merlin third class, and Percy thinks he's likely to get it now the details of the kidnapping are coming out."

"Well, we mustn't expect too much out of that," Hermione tutted, crossing to inspect Harry's robes critically. "The French have only agreed not to investigate all those 'disappearances' under threat of blackmail, after all. Can't make too much of a stir if that deal's going to hold up." She gave the back of Harry's robe a sideways tug and brushed at his shoulder a little, but it seemed that was more a formality than from any actual need, so Harry let it pass without comment.

"Well they should be ashamed of it," Ron grumbled, looking incongruously dishy in his charcoal and crimson auror's dress uniform, "They've been taking Malfoy's blood money all this time, and-"

"And that's no different to half of the British Ministry, is it?" Harry shrugged and stepped into his boots, "That's politics for you, Ron -- never really changes. And anyway, isn't it time for us to go?" Harry asked, putting a succinct end to the conversation.

"I suppose," Ron allowed grudgingly.

"Oh, Ron," Hermione sighed, "This is an important event! A wholly new field of medical practice! Harry's right to want to be there himself. It'll do a world of good for his public image, won't it Harry?"

"I, er. I hope so," Harry gave her a smile, as Hedwig snuggled tightly into his shoulder.

"Which would be worth mentioning if Harry bloody well _wanted_ a public opinion," Ron countered, "only he never has done."

"And I say it's high time he did," she rose to the tone of his voice with a spark in her eye that made her lovely. "The press has simply-"

"Er, guys?" Harry tried, fully expecting to be ignored. He was not disappointed.

"And the press is the bloody problem, isn't it?" Ron waved a hand at the window, where they could all still see the village green packed with strangers. "That down there's a security nightmare!"

Hermione tsked in just the way guaranteed to make Ron hot. "Honestly, Ronald. Harry's a hero, and he's a civil benefactor as well! Who would possibly want to-"

"All those people who aren't getting Lucius Malfoy's blood money anymore, for a start," he cut her off, "And you know nobody ever found his body. He could still be-"

"He isn't," Harry said quietly. "I know Lucius Malfoy's dead."

"You-know-who-" Ron began, then blushed fiercely as Hermione rolled her eyes, "Voldemort then," he soldiered on, blue eyes worried and angry and frustrated and so madly in love Harry wondered how Hermione could possibly miss it, "Voldemort's still alive, or whatever you call that, isn't he?"

"Oh, Ron, I can't believe you!" Hermione said, "With every auror in Europe looking for Professor Snape, you expect him to be able to make it all the way to Hogsmeade?"

"Aurors were hunting for Voldemort six years ago, and he made it all the way into Hogwarts then!" Harry winced at the reminder of Dumbledore's sacrifice, but neither of the others noticed. "Voldemort's sure to be wanting Harry over that greasy old git he's got now, and if Harry appears in public-"

"Oh really! That's just-"

"That's the idea." Harry shocked them both silent.

After a moment of staring, Ron managed to shake his head. "You're daft."

"Harry Potter, you can't possibly mean to-" Hermione braced her hands on her hips, but Ron's tirade cut hers in half.

"You're completely mental! Were you planning on TELLING anyone that you're setting up this whole ground breaking political nonsense as bait?"

"No," Harry replied calmly, "And you're not going to tell anyone either," he cast a sharp eye at Hermione, "Neither of you."

"So all this charity work you've been doing has been a sham?" She asked coldly, "You were just trying to lure him to England so you could have your big showdown?"

"No. I did what I felt was right with the money," he soothed, "But Ron's right about this appearance; I could have paid for the school without making a personal appearance. But I wanted the press to be talking about this -- I wanted to be sure not even Snape could miss the news of it."

"But why?" She asked.

"Because he's bloody cracked, I told you!"

Harry smiled and shrugged. "Because nobody will catch him otherwise. Voldemort's too powerful, and Snape's too canny."

"And you think we'll just let you take them both on alone, do you?" Ron growled.

Harry locked his eye and glared. "If the mountain comes to Mohammad, then you let Mohammad deal with it!"

"But it isn't any bloody Mohammad, Harry, It's Vol-"

"I know!" he shouted, "And I don't want anyone gunning him down before I get to him!" Hedwig grumbled and nipped his ear, and Harry forcibly restrained his ire. "That bastard killed Draco just as surely as if he held a wand to his forehead and cast the curse out loud. He killed my parents, he killed Sirius, he killed Dumbledore, and he killed Draco. Nobody's getting between him and me. Not this time."

Another long silence filled up the room, undercut with the sound of the tavern below, bustling with late breakfasters and sightseers.

"You're not a murderer, Harry," Hermione tried at last.

"You're right," he found a smile -- hollow and ill fitting over the scowl he wanted to wear, but he put it on for her. "I'm not a murderer. But I'm also not a victim, and I won't pretend to be just to keep people comfortable." He glanced at Ron, who had gone just a little green. "And I don't want to worry about you either. Promise you won't interfere."

"Harry! Come on, mate-"

"Not a word, Weasley! Auror or not, you're my best friend, and I won't have you in the line of fire! Now promise!"

They weighed glares for a long moment, and then the clock tower tolled quarter-to-nine. Ron looked away, surrendering with a soft curse. Harry waited. "All right!" Ron growled at last, "I won't tell anyone. But you'd bloody well BETTER know what the hell you're doing, Harry Potter!"

Hermione made that special 'tsk' sound again, and slipped between them, linking an arm through each of their own. "Ron, this is Harry -- you ought to know by now he makes it all up as he goes along!" But despite her light tone, neither of them missed the glimmer of tears in her hazel eyes.

~*~

Severus felt his fingers brush the wand -- smooth wood, body-warm and wary -- felt the magic skitter through him wrongwise, right hand _wrong hand_ first, and almost, _almost_ take hold.

_No!_ He woke with a jerk, shout strangled in his clogged throat as he yanked back his hand. But his fingers did not open first, so the young man's wand came free of his back pocket with a wrench instead of the smooth glide the thief had originally intended. "Drop it," Severus hissed, staggering back into the tight-pressed crowd as the young man groped his own arse with a startled yelp, "drop it now!" His own wand hand, deeply infected and bluntly numb these last two weeks, woke with a fierce throb and yearned after the stranger's wand.

From under the ragged, filthy hood of his stolen cloak, he could see the young man whose pocket he'd picked whipping about, searching the thronged press. Severus lurched back and with a sidelong wriggle, crammed himself between two large, frilly witches who protested his smell as much as his rough passage. He did not care for that -- he was still at war with his right hand, which refused to drop the purloined wood no matter how he shook it.

_You idiot!_ the thing inside him hissed, enraged as someone behind him shoved back with a curse, _you will have us caught!_ And again, the magic from the wand rushed over him, warm and rich and beautiful with life -- and again the spirit reached for it.

"Then caught we shall be, but you are going nowhere, spectre!" Severus snarled, and clamped down, curled up hard and breathless tight inside his skin, though every starving cell of him howled for the magic. For food, for water, power, for sleep, for _anything_ to sustain him. The thing in his back gave an agonizing wriggle, and Severus gasped through his teeth; grin or grimace would serve the same. "I am your oubliette, Tom Riddle," he said, "You die with me!"

"Oi, piss off, you mad bastard!" Someone to his right growled, shoving hard, "Some of us came to listen!"

Severus glared up from the shelter of his hood to find he'd come much farther in his brief doze than he'd imagined. The stage was barely ten yards away -- close enough to see Harry clearly amid the rustle of drab and gaudy which made up the Hogsmeade council. His robes gleamed the darkest possible green under the brilliant Autumn sky, pricked with fire as bright as the leaves that rattled like bones in the trees above. Harry's eyes were shielded behind the shine of his glasses, but Severus cringed back as he turned that way, imagining he could feel the sweep of green attention across his skin.

"Well some of us came for the shopping," Severus heard his voice grind out before he could stop the words. The thing inside him curled in satisfaction at the minor triumph, so he made them both pay with a coughing fit so deep and hard as to nearly shake him from his feet. The press around him cleared in disgust at the sound, and then farther yet when he spat the bloody phlegm from his mouth.

Such was the tenor of the war inside him; insult and flattery, revuslion and manipulation, disrespect and perfect, mutual loathing. Severus refused even the most basic maintenance which might make his parasite's life easy. Voldemort moved Severus to eat and steal clothes and money whenever the exhaustion overcame him. Severus evaded Voldemort's attempts to control him, slipping his occlumency between them like a sheet of mirrored steel whenever the spirit pressed too close. Voldemort twisted the _Morsmordre_ until the agony shook them both breathless. Severus recited inane Muggle gazettes from memory whenever Voldemort went too quiet.

Both made it no secret that this was the worst experience of their lives, but Voldemort was patient, and preferred Snape's wretched company to the oblivion of death. And Snape was stubborn, and would sooner die with his enemy clasped fast to his breast than risk him escaping through the one, single door remaining.

Harry Potter.

Even thinking the name caused a sharp, hungry pain in them both -- wrought a fierce need to see him again. To peek up through matted black hair and shape the young man's elegant, ache-free stride as he came to take the spade from the Mayor. To trace the glint and wave of his tousled hair over the long, bronze curve of his neck. To watch his hands tighten around the shaft of wood just...so.

He was moving again, drifting toward the stage while the thing inside him kept a conspicuous silence. Severus stopped himself with a growl, and jabbed the stolen wand hard into his left hand. Blood burst black and reeking over his skin. Agony marched up his spine with a shiver and curse in Voldemort's thin, reedy voice. "You will not have him!" Severus gritted through his clenched teeth.

_"You will not stop me!"_ came the reply, borne on a burst of pain and fury that almost cleared Severus' head enough to let him drop the wand.

Only just then, a flicker of grey and red caught his eye -- an auror in his dress robes, combing the crowd for possible (_probable!_) trouble. And for all his bluster, Severus was not yet ready to be taken away; not before he properly remembered the colour of green that hid behind those glinting frames of glass. Not before he remembered the tune of Harry's song, that nonsense chant in the soft, caressing tenor that made all things right while it filled his ears. Not before he'd reminded himself what milk and sugar tasted like in tea.

The auror looked his way, and Severus flinched, curled his mud-coloured gloom-cloak tighter and tried not to gag at the stench. Not as good as an invisibility cloak, but the spelled fabric did tend to discourage attention and trick the eye into sliding away somewhere more interesting. _Pass on,_ he thought, hiding the stolen wand in his sleeve, _Just pass on, damn you!_

And the auror did. And for a moment, Severus breathed, rattling with relief. "We are leaving now." He said aloud, not caring about the sidelong looks around him. But as he turned to slouch out of the crowd, he found his way blocked. Brown and green robes, medium height, softish but broad-chested, and with his feet planted wide in readiness. The owner of the wand, Severus realized with a grimace.

"There you are," said an all too familiar voice as a hand gripped Severus' elbow and shook, "What did you mean, nicking my- Professor Snape?"

Longbottom. Of course. Severus bared his teeth, jerked against those wide hands and made his eyes blaze in hopes of rousing one scrap of the terror that shrinking Gryffindor had once held for him. "Unhand me!"

Longbottom did not. He only stared at his once-fearsome potions Master with a kind of abject horror. "What's happened, Sir?" He breathed as the wind scraped a fall of yellow leaves out of the trees and sent them dancing like cinders across the impossibly blue sky.

Behind them, someone shushed loudly. Severus tried once more to twist free, and once more failed, chagrined to note that the wretch hadn't even needed to try very hard to contain him. "Take your bloody wand, Longbottom," he growled as someone's speech ended and a smattering of applause swelled into a wave, "I am leaving!"

And then the young man's broad, worried face tightened, and suspicion overtook the horrified pity. The jaw found iron as he plucked the wand from Severus' grip, the hands on his elbow found steel, and Severus found himself suddenly being dragged through the crowd. Toward the stage!

"What are you doing?" He tried to dig in his heels, cursing the weakness of his limbs, the rattle in his lungs, his lump-numb left hand and poisoned blood. All useful tools against the invader in his flesh, they rendered him helpless to resist this, this _botanist's_ strength. "Release me, you-"

"No, Sir," Longbottom replied, somehow managing to shove his way into the barrage of reporters who were even now surging forward in hopes of a comment or photo from the Boy Who Lived, "Harry will want to see you -- he's had everyone looking."

And the obscenity in Severus' back gave a smug little curl as the thought occurred to both of them at once; Harry, eyes wide and horrified with pity. Harry, arms outstretched, mind already thinking of healing spells against the drowning lungs and rotting flesh. Harry, completely unprepared for the lightning spike of pain and power and Dark Lord driving into him through that jagged scar. Harry with scarlet, twice-dead eyes looking out of his beautiful face. Harry raising his wand with deadly aim.

_Yes!_

"NO!" As though volume alone could ward the nightmare off. As though the word could grant him the strength to break that grip -- Longbottom's, or Voldemort's. As great a 'no' as he had to give. And all it did was part the way before them as startled reporters turned to see who shouted. "No," he pleaded as Longbottom hauled him forward. Then Harry turned, and Severus shivered to feel the green eyes graze him.

_"You have lost, Severus,"_ Voldemort crowed aloud.

"What was-" Longbottom flinched at the high, thin voice. For a second, his grip slackened. Severus lunged down to bite the man's soil-stained thumb as hard as he could. He tore away the instant Longbottom yanked his hand free, and fled into the startled crowd. _A quiet corner -- pull the cloak over, lie still,_ he thought, shoving frantically, _Aurors have missed me before._

But he could already track their pursuit in the outraged shouts he left in his wake. Severus risked a glance as he ducked under a cheeky young man's attempt to grab hold. The grey and red uniforms were converging on the stage from all directions, except for…

"Oi, you great oaf!" Ron Weasley's unmistakable voice filled the crisp autumn air with outrage, "Watch where the bloody hell you're going!" And with a terrific crash, the drinks table went lurching over, spraying pumpkin juice, tea, coffee, and milk everywhere. The screaming increased exponentially, and Severus ran for it, clutching his useless arm close and praying he could keep his fire-filled lungs from collapsing into helpless coughing.

He won his way to a corner and lurched around it. That street was freer, so he ran again, and tried not to guess whether the thing inside him was angry or amused at his escape. Another corner, another skidding turn. Wheezing, shallow breaths brought fluid to Severus' mouth with every gasp, but he did not dare slow his flight.

Flight. A winged shadow brushed over him, silent and owlish. He ducked, and talons grazed his shoulder, tangled in his hair before ripping free. With his watering eyes fixed on the coming corner and blood thundering in his ears, Severus told himself the owl had not been white.

_Alley,_ he realized through the greying roar, _Disapparate from there. Without getting splinced-_

But then Harry stepped from the gap, solid and sudden and unmovable in his path. His arms were outstretched and wandless, but unlike the nightmare vision, those green eyes blazed with something hot and hard and not remotely like pity.

Unable to overcome either momentum or gravity, Severus staggered and collapsed into Harry's grasp without even the strength to struggle. His outraged lungs seized tight -- cramped beyond choking, and panic boiled in Severus' gut as he clung to Harry like the drowning man he was. He felt his back give a twist, and arched against it, shaping the scream with silent lips; _Let go. Get away. Run, you fool!_

"I've got you," Harry murmured, and his arms wrapped tight around Severus' struggling chest. "I won't let you go."

"No," the word fought its way out, but then Harry kissed him -- forced open Severus' cracked, cold lips with his tongue, and blew a burst of pure, blinding magic into the failing lungs. Vibration. Sensation. For an overwhelming moment, Severus shocked rigid, barely able to twitch as the magic scoured his lungs. Even Voldemort howled.

But the lips did not release him, did not stop breathing for the both of them. The tongue would not be still against his own. The strong arms did not ease or let him slip down the wall. The slight, lithe body did not tremble to support the whole of Severus' weight once the savage spell eased and left him gasping weakly against Harry's shoulder.

He found the strength to curl one hand around Harry's waist, to turn his face just barely into the warmth of his neck, to breathe the smell of him deep into newly clear, heaving lungs. "Why?" Severus managed to gasp as the owl came to them in a gusting rustle.

"Because you love me," came the murmured reply he didn't expect.

Warning bells clamoured in his head as Voldemort gave a delighted twitch. Severus pushed away just far enough to shake his head. "I do…not, you…egotist," he said, but did not let go.

"You do. You always have," Harry's eyes narrowed with that righteous conviction which had always made Severus want to smack him. Or kiss him. "I realized it on the stage, when I heard you shout, when you ran as soon as I saw you. I know who filled those pensieves, Severus. I know."

"Draco-"

"Draco was the one who told me," Harry smoothed a hand up his back and somehow didn't flinch when his palm rolled over the twist of gristle and bone under Severus' right shoulder.

Severus gasped at the caress. "He was-"

Harry leaned close to whisper in his ear. "He was never a top, Severus. Never once. Not with me, and not with anyone else. You filled those pensieves in his name with a love you never gave me the chance to recognize," Severus shivered under that truth, transfixed by words he'd never hoped to hear coming just exactly too late. Feeling the tremble, Harry tightened his hold, and Severus realized he had damned himself with silence. Hedwig murmured, then hopped from Harry's shoulder to Severus', nipping at his tangled hair ina gentle, Gethsemane greeting.

"You lied to me, Severus Snape," Harry said, smoothing the matted locks clear of Severus' forehead, "I took you at your word because you were the only man who always told me the truth. I never questioned you, even when it didn't make sense," Harry shook his head -- stern, but somehow not quite angry. "You lied to me, but you lied for love of me, so I'll forgive you just this once. But I will not let you go."

_But you will. You will let me go because I am dying,_ Severus wanted to say through the ache of longing despair in his throat, through the stubborn breathing that refused to slow or stumble, _I am poisoned to you. Treacherous. I do not love you, please let me go before you die of me!_

But the weary months of flight and fighting crowded close in that alleyway, and the circle of Harry's arms felt safer than the fastness of Hogwarts ever had done. The owl-Judas leaned, comforting and soft and breathing gently by his ear. Voices were shouting a street away, perhaps closer. Searching voices. Angry voices.

_Go to sleep now, old fool,_ a voice whispered in his head, _Let someone else manage for awhile._

"Oi, don't you fade out, Snape," Harry gave him a steadying shake, "You stay with me!"

_Forever!_ the word occurred to him as he snapped his eyes open and gasped. But aloud, he offered only a hollow laugh. "Until... I die."

Because he could feel it, his death, and it wasn't far off. The shadow still stalked his blood through the fever-hot door of his suppurating hand, through the sleepless hungry miles his broken feet had plodded. That shadow was close enough now that Severus took its grin personally. His mended lungs only made it harder to spit into the grim spectre's face, but Severus still meant to try.

"Done," Harry answered without a flinch as the shouting voices drew near. Severus felt himself shifted, rolled into the solid curve of one shoulder. Hedwig fluttered, then settled in tight as Harry produced his wand and banished the dirty alleyway in a dizzying sideways slide.

~*~

Harry knew it the instant Snape lost consciousness. He didn't need the twist in his scar to tell him it was Voldemort he now clasped to his breast while the Chirons' Sacred Grove took shape and depth around them. He felt the change in the way the twitching mass where his right hand pressed the rags to Severus' back went absolutely still. He felt it in the way the man's weight became at once lighter, tighter, and more cumbersome. He felt it in the way Hedwig launched herself off Severus' shoulder, hooting in alarm.

"It's all right," Harry said soothingly, "we're here. It's almost over."

"Where," The man who hated him most in all the world peered out from the face of the man who loved him most, dark, sharp eyes sweeping the Grove. Harry looked too, taking in the towering trees in gold and scarlet and brilliant emerald moss studded with trillium lilies, at the bright, cold water slipping from the spring down to the still, deep pool. Beautiful to any eye, but Harry took greater comfort in the half-occluded roan and dun flanks -- almost still in the dappled leaf light, and the strong brown bow-hands of the Sagittariae, whose wary eyes wanted only for a single hint that Harry was not in control of the situation to let their arrows fly.

Voldemort took a deep, hungry breath -- Harry could feel the ribs creak to contain it. His eyes glittered, and that hooked nose twitched as the deep, earth-scented power coiled up around them. "What is this place? Where have you brought us, Potter?"

Harry smiled, just as though he was taken in by the careful imitation of Severus' voice. "I'll tell you in a moment. Come on, let's get you undressed."

A smirk, a raised eyebrow. "Impatient though you may be, this is hardly a romantic approach, Harry."

He was meant to blush, and so Harry did, pushing the blood hot and bright to his cheeks as he steered them to the pool's edge. "You must go naked into the waters," he equivocated as the worn and filthy garments came away in shreds under his hands, "Just as you were born. This place is ancient and holy, Severus -- clothes and Wizarding modesty have no place here."

He saw the dark eyes flash, and knew his bait had been taken. _A sacred spring unknown to mortal men, hidden deep in a forest where Wizardkind is forbidden to go,_ Harry imagined the spectre working it out, silently urging that grasping, desperate brilliance to leap to the conclusion, _This was what the Centaurs chased you away from all those years ago, Voldemort, believe it. This was what they were afraid you'd find. Believe this is your answer!_ But he kept his hands steady, and his movements sure, schooled his face to mild concern and pity as he revealed that starved, ice-pale body to the air.

"This is…" Voldemort forgot to copy Snape's voice for a moment, and Harry knelt to remove the knotted rags that held together the remains of Severus' boots. He kept hold of one foot at all times, lest Voldemort think to shove him aside to get at the spring. The very bones sang with the tension of restraint. As the last scraps of leather fell away, Harry looked up to find smouldering black eyes staring down at him. "Why have you brought me here?" Voldemort breathed with triumph in his eyes.

Harry stood, leaned close and gently kissed those narrow, cool lips. He smoothed his hands up the taut-ridged ribs to rest just under the collarbones, where the flesh ought to have stood thick. Under his palms, the captive heart raced. "Because," he smiled, "It's time for you to die."

And then Harry shoved him backward into the icy water.

~*~

Drowning. Ice locking a fist around the throat and bollocks. Bands of spiked iron cranking tighter, ever tighter around the breast until the lungs howl and the blood boils. Light farther than stars swimming above, dimming to grey and pounding cold.

_"Fight him, Severus."_

He yearned toward the voice, half-remembered and warm as blood through the bitter waters. He wanted that voice, needed it almost more than he needed to breathe.

_"That's it; I'm here. Come to me. Don't let him hold you under!"_

And with that, he could feel the drag -- anvil weight bound to his ankles, stone around his neck and ship's anchor dragging cold and hard against his spine. He was upside down again, wand out of reach, robes around his face, and Potter, hated Potter hailing votes for taking off his-

"NO!" Kicking, wriggling, lashing out madly, fury heating the gloom as stone and steel cracked.

He was on his knees, left arm trembling as the Dark Lord's wand carved ownership deeply into his flesh. He was on his knees before a tatty chintz chair, face wet with anger and tears and snot while a wrinkled hand pressed gentle obligation against his hair in soothing, weighty strokes. He was on his knees in bloody grass, giving up his guts to the night while his enemy's cottage burned. He was on his knees on a thick Aubusson, biting his lips bloody while a pale hedonist toyed rank against worth with a barbed quirt. He was on his knees. Again. Would always be on his-

_"Not to me, you won't. You always got up from your knees before, you'll do it this time too! I want you on your feet, Severus. On your feet, damn it! You're nobody's slave!"_

And he lurched upright. Clawed for purchase and seized solid, willing flesh. Scraped air deep and bright into his lungs, and sobbed with the life of it. "Nobody's," he heard a ragged voice say, "nobody's."

"Nobody's." Warm agreement across his ear as a lithe body pressed tightly against his own. He blinked the death out of his eyes and clutched that wet, velvety life close. "You're almost free, Severus," Harry went on, pressing close so his erection skidded along a startling hardness Severus would have thought himself too deep-drowned to manage.

He let out a yelp and thrust weakly back, clutching Harry's shoulders, pressing his fingers in deep. Sand slipped beneath his toes, but Harry didn't let him fall.

His arm began to burn. The pain shot straight to his bollocks, coiled tight around his throat and tried to shake him loose. Under his shoulder, the grisly flesh twisted upon itself, kicking the breath from his lungs in an agonized wheeze. He arched back, pain contracting the flesh behind while lust inflamed the flesh before.

"Yes," Harry growled and thrust against him, "Stay with me, you bastard!" Severus gasped to feel his fingers curl over the writhing knot and dig mercilessly in. Harry grasped his nerveless arm, dragged his ruined left hand from the water and pressed it into the hot, slick hollow between them. "Touch us, Severus," he urged.

And somehow he did, curling fingers that should have been weeks dead around their heated erections, feeling -- _feeling_ the slick precome, the sweat and the silky water. _Feeling_ every ridge and vein, the roll of foreskin over yearning head, the velvet grind of bollocks as they tightened against his fingers. _Dear Merlin,_ he thought. But the prayer that found its way past his lips meant far more.

"Harry." Rhythm like a gentle tide; thrust, grip and roll. Breath matched in stride despite the deadening burn of pain.

"I'm here," the words traced out along his throat in a needy groan.

"Harry," he gasped again, twitched and clutched from a sudden pain as fingers dug hard and deep into his back.

"I know," hissed thin through the teeth, "I've got it. I've got you." The solid hips thrust harder against his own, cock sliding urgent and needy into his palm, "Only loved...one man...all my life. Not. Losing. Him. Twice!"

"Harry," Urgently now, gripping hard, thrusting harder, driving that maddening friction deep into his brain and his rock-hard bollocks. "Harry!"

"Yes!" Cried the youth, and bit Severus' neck.

And Severus came. Screamed and pulsed and tore and bled and lived, damn it, _lived!_ Lived in the blinding pleasure racing out of his cock, lived in the shuddering cock crushed against his own and spilling hotly over his knuckles. Lived in the grinding tear out of his back, lived in the rush of heat and relief down his skin as something small and grisly ripped free of him with a screech.

Harry moved, swung his arm to fling something -- Severus did not bother to see what -- far from the pool. Under the laboring heave of his breath, Severus thought he might have heard a singing twang, a rush of speed and the thock of a sudden stop, but he could not bring himself to care. Harry was with him -- no dream, no delusion or fantasy, but real and sweaty and slick with come. Severus could feel the boy's heart racing against his own, and so he knew it had to be true.

"Harry," he breathed, and smiled to feel the silken tickle of that unruly hair against his lips.

"Severus," The reply curled around his heart like a cat, as Harry eased them both down into the warm, soothing water. "You're an idiot. You know that, don't you?"

He managed a laugh, and let Harry tip his head into the curve of his throat. "No doubt you've thought so for years." Then he slid his hand -- the left one, whole and sound, and stained only with forty years' potions rather than the tint of rot -- up the sleek-muscled chest. "But I suppose I have given you proof of it now, though I meant only to protect you."

Harry shivered as Severus found his nipple and toyed idly with it. "I know that. But you're going to stop it now," he touched a smiling kiss to Severus' forehead.

"Am I?" More for contrariness than actual disagreement.

Harry's chuckle appreciated that fact. "You are. Because you love me enough to live for me, even if that means having to learn how to respect me as well."

He pulled away to scowl. "Respect you? Me? Demanding miracles now, are you, Potter?"

"Relax," Harry said, green eyes glinting as he leaned back against the mossy stones and drew Severus down again, "We've time to sort all that out later. You've got your honour and your pride and your freedom, and what matters now is that you're alive, and I'm alive too."

"Relevant," Severus allowed around a sudden yawn as Harry's arms cradled him close, "But not what matters."

The huff of a laugh shook under his ear. "Fine then; tell me what matters, why don't you?"

And for reply, Severus yawned again, settled solidly and tightly against Harry's shoulder, and let himself slip into the first fearless sleep he'd had in years.

"I know," he was just awake enough to hear, "I love you too."

~* Fin *~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cyrano de Bergerac -- Severus Snape  
> Christian de Neuvillette -- Draco Malfoy  
> Count de Guiche -- Lucius Malfoy/Voldemort  
> Ragueneau -- Madame Rosemerta  
> Le Bret -- Minerva MacGonagall  
> Carbon de Castel-Jaloux -- Alastor Moody  
> The Cadets -- Slytherin House/ The Order.  
> Ligniere -- Remus  
> Viscount de Valvert -- Rookwood  
> Montfleury -- Umbridge  
> Cuigy -- Neville Longbottom  
> Roxanne -- Harry Potter  
> The Duenna -- Hedwig  
> Mother Marguerite de Jesus -- Arthur Weasley  
> Sister Marthe -- Hermione Granger  
> Sister Claire -- Ron Weasley


End file.
